


Live Together

by orphan_account



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13022058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Max and Chloe survive the storm, and deal with the costs. An ongoing series of moments from their lives as they learn to cope with the weight of surviving and get on with their blossoming relationship.





	1. Through the Blizzard

The world shifts, like tectonic plates snapping after two-thousand years of pressure, it shifts from one reality into a new, much more unpleasant one, where Chloe isn’t safe. Where people are dead, and are going to stay that way. The wind howls and whips and the rain collapses down in sheets. The air smells like fire and salt, and if Max wanted to she could look over one shoulder and see Arcadia Bay starting to burn from gas leaks and loose sparks. An entire town on fire, soon to be washed away by the storm into nothing.

“Max? Max, can you hear me? Please, say something.” Chloe says, but her voice barely reaches Max’s ears before its swallowed up by the storm. Max takes stock of her friend, sitting on the ground, head hung in between her knees. She looks like she’s going to be sick. Max half sits half falls down onto the dirt, her legs suddenly unstable beneath her.

 

“Chloe?” Max says. Her voice feels harsh and unnatural out of her throat. She wonders when she was, just now. She can’t recall. She tries to remember anything, but it’s all too mixed up. She remembers hugging Warren in Two Whales, but she can’t remember if that actually happened when she is now. It must not have, Chloe was dead then wasn’t she? The familiar headache threatens her, the stabbing pain in her eyes. Trying to remember hurts her.

“I guess I must have passed out. Sorry.” Max says dumbly, trying to stop the world from spinning around her. Chloe gets up with some effort and moves over, clothes and hair sticking to her skin with the rain, blood on the palms of her hands, had she fallen over? Max remembers her getting shot, but that was in a different time.

“Oh, thank God. Don’t you ever do that again, okay?” Chloe says, half threatening. She pulls Max into a hug, but the strength is gone from both of them. Chloe cradles her more than she hugs her, but Max leans into it. Did they kiss in this time? Did they go swimming? Max’s eyes feel like they’re going to explode, and her stomach sits heavy in her gut.

“Chloe, I feel…that nightmare was so real,” Max says, her head turned into Chloe’s shirt, her voice muffled. “Chloe I’m going to-” Max doesn’t have time to finish. She turns her head just in time and pops, puking up something white and frothy and flecked with blood. She can’t remember the last time she ate. Was it even today? Chloe rubs her back, pulls on her shoulders to get her into a position on her hands and knees. Max wretches a few more times, but nothing comes out.

“Fuck.” Chloe says. 

Max grabs onto Chloe lamely, pulling herself into a standing position, leaning against her friend. From where she’s standing Max can see the big pillar in the sky, white and grey and furious, swirling with debris. The sky’s full of them, these pillars, like they’re holding up the clouds. They’re already planting themselves in town, ripping it to shreds. Soon there will be nothing there.

“Chloe, I think,” Max says, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, tasting something like death in the remnants of her bile. “I think with all the time travel, I think I caused this.” The wind pulverizes the sky, cutting at Max’s exposed skin, shooting through the bay with a grand ‘whoof,’ eating up everything as it goes. 

Max remembers the morning in Chloe’s room, standing on her tiptoes, kissing. She remembers the taste of morning breath and chlorine and cigarettes and coffee. Remembers thinking that Chloe doesn’t brush her teeth enough, and remembering that neither does she. She remembers how quickly Chloe pulled away, blushing, both of them blushing. Remembers how much that hurt. But she also remembers the way Chloe looked at her afterwards, like she was embarrassed and thrilled. Max remembers the bracers of her heart buckling under the weight of her thoughts at that moment. She could kiss Chloe again. Could push her back onto the bed. She was scared of sex, had never done it before, but with Chloe it would be okay.

Again, the wind screamed, and Max left her memories, and the abandoned timelines. Chloe had one hand on her shoulder and the other gently cradling the side of her face. Her eyes were red, and exhausted. Had she been crying? Or smoking? Max couldn’t remember how the sequence of events lined up. Were they high in this time? Had someone died? Rachel Amber had, right? 

“Fuck that, Max. You saved me. You didn’t ask for this power, but you used it to save me.” Chloe said, her voice sure in that moment. “This shit was fated, right? All of it? That’s how fate and destiny work, right?” Chloe demanded. Max looked at her, searching her face for the answers. She tried to put everything into some kind of order, maybe there was an answer somewhere along the way. She had changed things, right? She had shirked fate, so maybe it was all made up. None of it was real. it was all just a sham, and she had changed it. Unless the storm was the universe’s way of correcting itself.

“And you found Rachel, with this power!” Chloe was shouting now, maybe shouting to be heard over the storm, but Max got the feeling that maybe she was trying to convince both of them. “So, fuck it, you’re not some time master, but you’re Maxine Caulfield! You’re amazing.” Chloe had both hands on Max’s shoulders now, and Max could hear her heart slamming against her chest. The adrenaline had drained her, torn her insides to pieces, she was certain she was very sick from the skipping through time, and the running around half dead, avoiding falling debris and phantoms of her psychotic, rapist, murderer teacher. Even if the physical damage wasn’t real, surely the psychological damage was. 

But the adrenaline wasn’t it. It wasn’t the reason why she felt like this. She was tired, sure, but there was more. She felt like a jug, full of water, constantly threatening to tip over, and she knew that when she did she would feel something. Something huge, and heavy, and too great to possibly contain. She could feel Chloe’s hands on her shoulders, and wanted to fall against her. She wanted this to be over. She didn’t care how. 

But the sky was still swirling. She looked to the sea, and the tunnels of wind had started consuming everything. They would avoid the cliff, but would definitely tear the town to kindling. They would tear up the supports and the foundations and by morning there would be nothing left of Arcadia Bay. One would be able to drive through and never even know that there had been a town there at all. 

“Maybe.” Chloe said, and Max looked back at her. “Maybe you can save them. Max, maybe this is the only way.” And Max knew what she was going to do before she did it. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled polaroid, and began to smooth it out. Had Max given it to her? She couldn’t remember. It was the picture of the blue butterfly in the bathroom from that first day, when she had saved Chloe without knowing who she was. It had been selfless then, but now it was nothing but selfish. If she went back and did it now it would have been for her more than anyone. It would have been to save her friend. The friend she loved. The friend she was in love with.

 

Chloe handed the polaroid over and Max took it in her shaky hands. She remembered the smell of the bathroom, and of the gunpowder all the times she had failed to save Chloe that first time, and the smell of blood. She remembered the fear for her own safety, gone now, and the fear of Nathan, gone now too. Replaced with anger. That was all that was left, alongside the exhaustion and the love – hate and anger. She hated Jefferson, hated Nathan, wanted them dead. She wanted them dead and gone, and she would have done it herself in that moment. 

“You could go back, right? Change everything? Fix it.” Chloe said. Max already knew what she was really saying, but she didn’t want to voice it out loud. That would be much too horrible. 

“Fix it?” She said.

“Yes! You could go back and make everything like it was when you took that picture, all it would take would be for me to…” Chloe trailed off, and Max felt something rise up in her. Chloe put her head in her hands, and Max’s stomach pitched and rolled. Lightening careened from the sky into the lighthouse, crackling angrily, but it hardly mattered. 

“Fuck that!” Max said, her voice cracking. “Fuck that, you’re my number one priority, no. You’re all that matters to me.” She had meant it to come out as strong, as angry as she felt, but it was garbled and pleading. She felt like a child, and that only made her angrier. She could feel the tears on her face, but it hardly mattered, the rain would mask them.

“Max, I know, I know, but I don’t deserve it.” Chloe said, and she was backing away now, crying too, her voice quavering like she might fall to pieces at any moment. “God, I’m so selfish. Not like my mom, fuck, look what she gave up. She deserves better than me! Deserves more than to die in a storm in some fucking diner! Even fucking David deserves more than this shit!” She was screaming now, more at the storm than at Max, but it still hurt. 

Max thought of Joyce, of how much she loved Chloe, and how much she had given up. She thought of the bills on the table, and the way she looked at David and Chloe. David. He had been so brave when he rescued Max, and so destroyed when he learned Chloe was dead. He was a good man, somewhere, deep down. They both deserved to live. 

“There’s so many people down there who deserve to live, over me!” Chloe went on, but Max was already shaking her head.

“No! I’m not trading you. I won’t.” Max said.

“It’s not trading me! I was meant to die, right? That’s how this shit works, one fate! That’s what the storm is for right, to fix all the fucking around with time? I’m alive because of us playing with time, so that storm is here for me too, right?” Chloe demanded. “I’ve almost died a dozen times, and all the shit that’s been going on? You said it yourself, this is all because of you saving me.” 

Max hadn’t said that, she had just said that the storm was her fault. But maybe Chloe was right. It didn’t matter now. Max was shaking her head. Chloe was advancing, suddenly quiet, but Max was backing away, dragging her numb body backwards. Chloe reached her and stooped down, made Max look in her eyes. They were both crying, and Max’s whole body felt like one big, raw, red nerve. She was pitching, she knew that, her emotions were threatening to tip and come spilling out. 

“I’ve been selfish, but I need to accept this, right?” Chloe said. 

“Chloe,” Max choked out. Her throat was hot and angry, and her whole body was shaking. Surely she was dying, surely she couldn’t sustain this, at any moment she would topple over, or break apart into nothing. This was too much. 

“Max, you came back to me this week, you did nothing but show me love, and friendship, and you made me happier than I’ve been in years,” She took Max by the shoulders. “Wherever I end up, all of that was real, those moment belong to us, and they always will. But please, you have to do this for me.”

“Chloe, I…” Max said, hating her voice. She sounded so petulant, so childlike. Like she was begging for something from a parent. She thought about the conversations she had with herself in the café, about how weak she was, and she was right, she was weak. She was pathetic and frail and childish. Childish. Going back in time to fix her problems, a child’s dream. A child’s desire. 

“I can’t make this choice. I can’t do this.” Max said, wiping her eyes.

“Max. No, Max. You’re the only one who can.” Chloe said. Her hands were still on Max’s shoulders. Still holding her up. Max was convinced that was all that was holding her up. She knew that any moment now the house of her heart would come tumbling down and she would simply cease to be. She liked that image of death. Not sleep, or Heaven, or Hell, just nothing. She liked the idea of being nothing. Her consciousness scattered to the universe. Nothing left of Max Caulfield. But that too was childish. She wanted to run away. 

Max knew she could too. She could run away. Keep on repeating that morning where she kissed Chloe. She had done a little bit of it already. She had gone back and kissed her over and over. She had perfected the technique. She had impressed her by the end of it, Max was sure. She could go back to that moment. She could push the kiss further, she knew that Chloe wanted her to. She could nudge Chloe back towards the bed, could get on top of her. Chloe had slept with Rachel, right? So she would know how to take care of Max. She and Chloe could be together forever, in that moment. 

But that was still just running away. Avoiding things. The storm was boiling the sea, and Chloe was looking at her, was pleading for her to do something. If she went back, let Chloe die, there’s no guarantee that anything would change. She could still have done too much already for it to ever be okay again. This was a world where she had power, and in the world where she had power people died because of her. Was it selfish to go back? To fix things for her own benefit, or the benefit of others? Hadn’t that caused all this? What if she went back and things just got worse because of her meddling? 

Max felt the polaroid in her hands, felt it twisting in her grip. It was like a snake, and she knew that if she tried to look at it then it would strike. All of this was going to happen exactly like this, over and over and over again, right? She had done too much already. Who was she to think that she could ever fix anything? She had fucked up, and now she and everyone else had to deal with it. She had to take that responsibility. Chloe’s face was hard and sad and Max wanted to save her.

So she did.

 

She felt the polaroid struggle in her grasp and she opened up her hands and the storm took it. Took it like it was taking everything else. Both of them, Max and Chloe, astonished, watch it go.

“Max?” Chloe said, turning back to her. In her eyes Max saw something, relief and betrayal and love and anger. And that did it. Max felt the emotional walls she had built up explode outwards as everything she had tried to contain spilled out. She fell into Chloe, sobbing, her hands doing tender violence to Chloe’s jacket. She wanted to shove her, but there was no strength left. So instead she just yelled.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Max shouted. “You want me to go back, again? Fuck with time more?” Max screamed. She knew that she was sobbing and there was snot running down her nose and face and she was ghastly, but she had to say it. 

“Go back and do this again? Who the fuck am I, Chloe? Who was I to fuck with time in the first place? This is my fault! My fucking fault. This storm, those people, all of it, this is all because of me, and if I go back there’s no telling what the fuck could happen! I can’t, never again, this, all of it, it’s too much! It’s my fault, but I can’t…never again…” She trailed off as she was running out of steam. She fell down onto her knees. Chloe fell with her, held her close. Sobs rolled through her, and Max let them. She was too tired to fight. Maybe she wasn’t the fighting kind. 

“And,” She said, quieter now, the sobbing still rocking her. “I can’t be without you.” It was the truth. Both things were true. She couldn’t go back because it was too dangerous, too unpredictable, and if she did, if she lost Chloe, it would be too much.

Everything she had been holding in all week, all month, all of her life, was stampeding through her. All of the grief, and sadness, and pain, all of it was rocking her into pieces. She gripped Chloe, her hands finding purchase wherever they could. Chloe’s jacket. The back of her neck. Her shoulders. She touched her wherever she could. She pulled herself into Chloe’s arms as much as she could. Tried desperately to close the distance between them. To remove even the atoms that separated them. 

“God, Chloe, I love you so much.” She said, sobbing, quiet, shaking, badly in need of her best friend, and the woman she was in love with. Chloe wrapped her up in her arms, helping her to close the distance, until they were half strewn all over one another, tangled up, watching the storm eviscerate the world.

“I can’t…” Max began, pitifully, but Chloe made shushing sounds. She pressed her mouth and nose into Max’s sopping wet hair, and Max realized it was a kiss. Her knuckles were white, her frail body clinging to Chloe desperately, but in that moment, she had a sort of clarity. This was her fault. A power like hers could never be used responsibly, could never be safe, and her mistakes would be something she would have to live with forever. Every death would be hers to bear. But she knew Chloe would be there with her too. Was it worth it, she wondered? Was she even right to decide?

The sobbing returned, harder now, rolling through her like thunder, and she curled up against it, tried to stop herself shaking. She felt like her bones would powderize themselves under the force of her agony. Chloe held her tightly, tried to stop the shaking, the tears, the horror of it all. Max could tell in some far-off way that Chloe was crying too. She was aware in some way that all of this was real, but it still felt distant. This moment was a figure on the horizon, already reaching the disappearing point. 

They watched the storm take the town, turn it into scraps of wood, and then set the wood on fire. The destruction was so total, the obliteration so complete. They watched it turn into something like the planet Mercury: white hot, nothing alive, nothing at all. The storm and the fire that followed took everything that there was. Burned all of it out. Burned the heart out of it. Max knew, she knew even as it was happening, that some people would survive. Even the worst storms never killed everyone. She felt a terrible selfishness in that moment, as she counted the people she hoped made it out.

She wanted Joyce and David to live. Kate. Warren. Frank. Even Victoria. She would have traded places with any of them in that moment, that they would live, and she would die for them. If that was all it took, she would do it. 

The night turned to day though, and the storm passed, and the fires burned themselves out, finding no purchase in the verdant green of the forest around Arcadia Bay. She must have fallen asleep, because when she was awake again she was lying in Chloe’s lap. Exhausted. Every bone in her body ached. Every muscle hurt. She could see the town, smoking. Chloe was stroking her hair, like she had done when Max had passed out in the junk yard. She had been rattling the cage of her body so hard, for so long, she knew she was sick. Could feel the push back of her whole being, demanding that she stop. That she give up. 

“Hey!” She heard from behind and below. “Is anyone up there?” Voices. Unfamiliar voices. Some rescue team. They must have seen the truck. 

“Max.” Chloe said. Her voice was harsh and rasping from the screaming, and the crying. “Max, I think the National Guard or someone is here.”

It was the National Guard. A whole team of them. They were already working on getting into the town, already canvasing for survivors, and they had seen the two girls from the beach. They put them into the gymnasium of a nearby elementary school in what can only be described as a refugee camp. It was tents set up, maybe ten of them, with six cots to a tent. Max wondered how many people would come to fill up the tents. She wanted to see, wanted to find out, but she was too exhausted.

The next days passed in a blur. Time seemed to shrink and expand. She was aware only vaguely of voices. Of people speaking to her, and around her. She was aware mostly of Chloe. They slept in one of the cots, Chloe holding her from behind. She knew that Chloe was up and down sometimes, awake more than she was asleep, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to say anything. The days passed like this. She was aware of people filling the tents, of people standing near her, and Chloe talking to them. She was aware too that Chloe was never too far away. Never gone for more than a moment. 

The first time she was alone, Max panicked. She shot up, her breathing was harsh and ragged, looking around in the near total darkness. She was aware that she was shouting for Chloe, or was that someone else? The next thing she was sure of was that Chloe was holding her. Kissing her hair and face and holding her tight. She went back to sleep.

She was sure that Chloe had, at some point, taken a damp cloth to her face and hands to clean her up. She knew that Chloe was waking her up from time to time to make her drink water, which she would, and then she would immediately fall back to sleep. Time passed like this, but she knew it passed linearly, in one direction forward. Sooner or later she would have to wake up and deal with it.

But she knew too of the cost of all this. The diner was gone. Everyone from school. Everyone she had seen in town would be dead now, right? She had seen them in another world, in another life, and they were dead now. She had saved them once, but couldn’t do it again. 

She woke up once and heard Chloe on the phone. She heard only snippets of conversation, barely knew who or what was talking, and what the words meant. 

“No, she’s here. Yes, I promise…we’ll be waiting, it’s okay. We’re safe.” Fragments of a conversation. Chloe’s voice, but no one else’s. It had to be a phone conversation, but with who? It hardly mattered, she decided. She just wanted to sleep.

And she did, but eventually she would have to wake up. Eventually she would have to take stock of the price she had paid for her actions, and for the life of her friend. 

The world shifts. Settles into place. Time regains its structural integrity, and this reality is all that’s left, and it fizzes and crackles with a dull, rhythmic energy. In her dreams Max hears the universe screaming, demanding something of her, wailing for her, but she can’t make any of it out. The dreams fade, and she finds herself in a new time completely free of her actions, and now only humming with their consequences. 

She feels Chloe’s weight and warmth, hot and steady against her back. With some struggle, with her whole body screaming and aching and pleading for stillness, Max turns around in the cot. The world is still angry static, but there she is. Chloe. Eyes half open, looking at Max. A dim smile on her face.

“Hey.” Chloe says.

Somewhere in this world there is pain, and suffering, and people who are hurt and are going to stay that way for a long time, and people who are dead, and are always going to stay that way. But Max doesn’t see them. Soon she knows she’ll have to, but not just then. 

She leans in and they kiss. It’s not like it was in Chloe’s room, it’s slow, and measured, and then it’s not. They smash their mouths together, struggling to get as close as they possibly can be to one another. Max tugs and pulls, her hands all over Chloe, on her face and back and hips, and butt, unrestrained in their searching and touching, desperate for the sensation of bare skin, and she can feel tears on her face. Tears of relief and anguish in equal measure. Their teeth click on accident, their tongues mingle. Chloe tastes like salt, and morning breath. Horrible, in fact, just as bad as Max is sure she tastes. But she loves it. She loves every instant of it. Every second. Nothing will ever be enough. She needs Chloe with her, to be a part of her. There’s nothing adequate she can say, but she feels like she has to say something. 

“I love you. I love you. I love you.” Max keeps saying, when she can. 

“I love you.” Chloe repeats back. 

 

At length Max stops, she can’t breathe, and her body hurts, her head pounds. Chloe holds her tight, her hand under her shirt, fingers touching bare skin. Chloe must have undressed her at some point. 

“What happened?” Max says.

“The National Guard brought us back, they’ve been bringing people in and out for days. You’ve been asleep for like three days, dude.” Chloe said. Max knew it was early, maybe before dawn, but she knew that she was done sleeping.

“Is anyone alive?” Max says.

“Lots of people.” Chloe says. “Your parents are here. Don’t you have to pee, dude?” Chloe says, and Max is suddenly aware of all of the very necessary biological functions she’d been neglecting during her three days of sleep. 

“Yes, yes, yes.” She said. “Help me up.” And Chloe did.

They walked through the aisles of the makeshift camp in the gym of the elementary school. There were dozens of people, now more than the tents could contain. Max recognized scraped up faces from school. Some people had made it. She and Chloe included. She peed, and showered, and they scrounged food which Max ate ravenously. They were in a tent with strangers mostly, and Alyssa, who was sleeping soundlessly. They didn’t speak.

Max wanted badly to know who was alive, but she could tell by looking at Chloe that some people hadn’t made it. She also wanted to strip down to nothing and make love to Chloe. It hardly mattered that it was in this cot, in this gym, in front of everyone. She didn’t care. She needed to touch her, to be alive. She was starving for food, but she looked at Chloe even more ravenously.

“Do you want to know who’s alive?” Chloe asked. 

“If I asked you to make love to me, would you?” Max said. Chloe blushed, and for a moment her face was twisted up into an embarrassed smile. Max was only wearing shorts and a T shirt. It wouldn’t even be hard to do it without getting caught. At length, Chloe shook her head.

“Not here. Not like this.” Chloe said. Max knew that she was right. Knew that she wanted to remember her first time with Chloe as something that lasted for days, in a huge comfortable bed, as something that was beautiful and warm and full of love, as something that she would cherish forever. Not silently in a cot surrounded by the half dead. But at the same time, she didn’t care. She sighed. 

“Who’s alive?” Max asked. They took a walk to find out.

“Our parents are here. Joyce and David are in a hospital, they got buried under some rubble, and David’s burned up, but not badly, and your parents are with them. They’re fine, but there’s no hotels, and they can’t stay here so they’re sleeping outside of the ICU. They called a bunch, and spent a ton of time sitting by our cot. They’re worried.” Chloe said as they peeked into tents, waking no one as they went. 

Max saw Kate and Brooke, but no one else she knew. No one in the gymnasium with them was badly hurt, but the way Chloe was talking she knew that some people had to be. 

“How many people are dead?” Max asked. Chloe shrugged, but Max could see something on her face. “How many?” 

They snuck out of the gymnasium and into the administrative parts of the school, where the National Guard had set up. There were huge lists tacked to the walls of the missing, and the confirmed dead, and the unconfirmed people, whose families hadn’t been located yet. There were printed lists too, of all the people they knew were alive and dead, with pictures. The line of the missing was the longest. Max didn’t look at any of them too hard. Didn’t really want to know. 

“We should get dressed.” Chloe said. Max nodded. Standing there in the entryway area of the school, right next to the principal’s office, she felt like she was going to be sick. All of the people’s names tacked on the wall. She hated herself for letting them die, for killing them herself really. As if she could tell what Max was thinking, Chloe wrapped her arms around her from behind, burying her face in the crook of her neck. Max was certain that even after the shower she must smell odd, still, but it was nice. She rested her hands on Chloe’s, which were around her waist.

“We should,” Chloe said, and so they did. 

They dressed in their old clothes, only half cleaned from what Chloe could manage in the sink at some point over the three days. They were brushing their teeth and people were beginning to stir. Max felt the astounding desire to leave before she could get stopped by anyone she knew. She wanted to keep the world to herself and Chloe until they saw their parents. 

They managed to get to the parking lot before most people were up. There were cars all over, and it took Chloe a while to find hers. Max’s dad had driven it over at some point. Everyone was eager to do anything that they could. Sitting in the cab, the heat coming on, hand in hand they looked at one another.

“Ready?” Chloe said.

“Do we have to go see them?” Max asked. “I don’t want to see anyone.” 

“We should.” Chloe said. Max felt tears threatening at the corners of her eyes again, but she blinked them away.

“Okay.” She said. “Let’s go.”


	2. Coming Out: Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning when Chloe and Max tell their parents about their relationship.

I feel Max’s hand in mine, sweaty, she takes it out periodically to wipe it on her pants before slipping her fingers back through mine. I don’t mind it. After three days cradling her in her cold sweat, I don’t mind much of anything that her body does that she might think is gross. We’ve been sitting in the car for fifteen minutes, in the parking lot of the hospital. We had to drive around Arcadia Bay, around most of the damage, so we didn’t see very much of it, but I can tell she’s scared of what’s inside of the hospital. So am I. 

This is my fault, right? Max did this all for me, so everyone dead, everyone, they were on me, right? They were dead and that was my fault, and the worst part is, I wanted it. I was losing my mind. Running around looking for Rachel, half insane, one step away from having a fucking map on my wall with push pins tied together with string like someone in a bad spy movie. But Max came back, and we found each other, and we told each other that we weren’t going to be separated again, and here we are. Together. At the cost of other people’s lives.

I saw the names when Max was asleep, heard the numbers of how many people had died or were missing. Nearly half of the town. The storm was so fucking sudden, so completely out of nowhere, and the bay funneled it right into town. My mom is alive. David is alive. That’s something. That they’re safe at least. But now, because they’re safe, and conscious, and here, with Max’s parents we have a question to answer.

“We should tell them, right?” Max says, looking at me. I felt her thumb, rubbing the back of my hand in slow circles. Her eyes are tired and half frantic, and I know what she’s doing because I was doing it a few days ago. Hyperfixating to avoid any of the awful implications. Half the town is dead or missing because of me, but Max is wondering how to come out to her parents. 

“I mean,” She says. “We should tell them that we’re dating, right? Like they’ll want to know. I mean, maybe not like first thing like ‘hey guess what we’re alive and also in love and dating,’ but maybe after we’ve established we’re not dead, right?” Max says it so fast I nearly miss the part where she says that we’re dating.

“We’re dating?” I say, and I see her deflate.

“Are we not?” She says. Before she can move away, which I feel her doing, I scoop her up into my lap. She’s so light, like all that running through time has actually had an effect. I bury my face in the crook of her neck, and squeeze her, which makes her squeak in surprise. She smells like hard-water, and schools, and the musty old cot, and debris, and salt, and fire, and my heart hurtles through me and into her. 

“I just…wasn’t sure. I’d like to. Fuck yes. Yeah, we are.” I say. I think of Rachel, the second girl I loved, who was always more in love with the world than she was with me. After we fizzled out we used to talk about Max, and how much I wanted to see her again, how much I wanted her back. This was never in the cards though. Rachel would tell me to call her, and I never would. I was too mad, but all of this shit wiped that away. There was nothing left now but the two of us.

“I never really thought we’d be…” Max trails off.

“Girlfriends.” I finish for her and she beams at me. “We should tell them.”

We must have looked like a real mess walking into the hospital, but no more than anyone else I guess. We’re dressed in old clothes I had scrubbed at a bit while Max was asleep, but they’re still filthy, and somehow, I had gotten blood on Max’s shirt at some point. My hat’s half off my head, and my hair is totally fucked. My hat covers the rat’s nest on the back of my head, but Max has no such luck. Her hair sticks out in wild directions. It wasn’t hard to find our parents though, so we don’t look too much like lost refugees as we march through the hospital halls.

We get to the ICU and find that it’s full to bursting, but weirdly serene. Most of the people in here are fucked, and won’t get better. There’s a man, someone who I don’t know, in one of the rooms, moaning. He’s sitting in bed, and his legs aren’t there. Where they should be underneath the sheet, there’s nothing. In the next room there’s a woman in a pair of arm casts. I wonder if she’ll ever have full function back. In the next room there’s a pair of people, a woman is sitting at the bed of a man, and half of his face is pulped, and there’s a patch over one eye now. Something must have fallen on his face, or burned it. I think of David.

We get to the wing of the ICU where David and Joyce and Max’s parents are. We could stroll right in, we don’t need to be buzzed or anything, but instead we lean against a wall and wait. We look at each other. I can see tears in Max’s eyes for all of the people she didn’t save so that I could live. This isn’t even the worst of it, couldn’t be, right? These people are stable but there are people out there who still might die, right? People in more intense parts of the hospital, with half their skin melted off or whatever. I look at Max and wonder if she regrets it. Seeing it all laid out like this, I wonder if she would go back and let me die if she could.

I think of what it might be like to die. What it might be like to see Max standing over me, sobbing, all the blood draining right out of me as I slip away. I’m so fucking weak, so selfish, I can’t even bear to think of it. To think of Max like that. To think of myself dying. That speech on the cliff was bullshit, I could neve really do it. Maybe I knew that. Maybe I knew that Max would never choose to let me die, and that’s why I offered. I try not to think about it.

We separate before we enter the room, me first, pushing in. Joyce and David are both in separate beds. They got buried at the diner, but they managed to dig out. David has some sort of cling film looking wrap on his leg, and the skin beneath it is crispy looking. He’s burnt badly, but he’s mostly okay. He’ll walk after some therapy, they told me on the phone. They also told me that he dug himself out and then found Joyce. They were buried separately. That’s how he burned his leg, he was digging when a fire started, but he kept going to get her out. They deserve so much more than me, they both do.

Max’s parents wrap us both up in hugs as soon as they see us, and Joyce gets up and comes over to join them. The only one who can’t obviously is David, but our eyes meet and I can see he’s tearing up. Fuck man, this is too much. The words move so fast, we’re ushered in and sat down and Max’s mom and dad – Vanessa and Ryan – fawn over us. Joyce too.

“Oh God! We were so worried, we knew you were well, but they wouldn’t let us leave!” Joyce says, and I can’t help but smile. My mother kisses me on the forehead and keeps touching my face, like I might disappear if she doesn’t.

“Max, honey, you’re awake!” Vanessa is saying to Max. “Oh, we were so worried, but Chloe told us you were just tired, exhausted, that makes sense, I guess.” Max is trying to get away from her mother’s grasping hands, and her father is stoically looking on, holding onto Max’s shoulders. David shifts with a grunt.

“Come here, Chloe, let me…” He trails off, but I stand up and go over to him. His hands, usually rough, are gentle, he touches my wrist and looks at me worriedly. He notes the scrapes on my hands and arms, but otherwise looks relieved that I’m not hurt. He can’t quite hold back the tears though, and he leans forward, doubling over. 

“Shit, damn it, sorry, I…” He trails off again and I lean over to hug him. It feels like the natural response to it. Joyce comes over too and we huddle in a weird half hug, but it feels good. There’s something like a lightness in the room, where nothing else really seems real, like nothing out there happened at all. I catch Max smiling at her mom, who’s remarking on how thin she’s gotten. She has gotten thin. So frail.

“Thanks, David.” I manage at length, returning to my step-father. It was easy to hate him last week, but now everything was so impossibly different. 

We spend most of that afternoon lying, Max and I. It’s necessary. What were we doing up on that cliff? Nothing, just seeing the sights, and then the storm rolled in suddenly. Why are we both so tired, so exhausted? Well it was just a lot to deal with, of course. Why was Max so weird and catatonic this whole past week? How did she know about Jefferson again? She was shocked about her favorite teacher, and Kate told her. It’s mostly bullshit, but who cares at this point? Some lies are going to get us through, right? 

Eventually we – Vanessa, Ryan, Max, and I – go downstairs and get food for the everyone, and in line Max gives my hand a gentle squeeze and I know that when we get back upstairs it’s going to be time to come out with it. I’m sure they already suspect something. It was odd enough that we be sharing a cot, but more than once they came to find Max and I asleep, spooning, my lips half pressed against the back of her neck. Maybe they could chalk it up to being close friends if we never said anything, but that wasn’t going to happen. 

I feel nervous on the elevator ride. I’ve known Vanessa and Ryan for so long I can’t really remember what my life was like before I knew them. They’re pretty progressive, but what about Joyce and David? Jesus fuck, man, was now even a good time. There’s no way to communicate this to Max though, but I can tell just by her shifting glance and spaciness that she’s just as in her head about this as I am, but I’m not really sure if that’s good or bad. 

In the room, the conversation has lilted away into a comfortable joking half-silence, as if everyone is waiting for the subject of the future to come up. Joyce sits on David’s bed, while the Caulfields have pulled up folding chairs, and Max and I share the one overlarge arm chair in the room, meant for one guest. Fuck man, not only do I have to tell these people that I’m trying very hard to fuck their daughter, but I also have to do it with her basically in my lap? Fuck fuck fuck, Max laces her fingers in mine, in the nonexistent space between us. It’s plausible that her parents don’t see it, but both David and Joyce do.

“So,” Max says, and I feel my heart leap into my throat. “Everyone, uhm…” Her voice is small, but all of the attention immediately goes to her. She balks under this and I feel her squeeze my hand, and I look at it. Which means Joyce and David definitely take notice now. I see the spark of recognition in Joyce’s face and I know that if I don’t say something they’re going to ask. Stupidly, triumphantly, I pull Max’s hand onto my lap, so that now everyone can see, Ryan and Vanessa are already craning to get a better picture. Even more stupidly, and more triumphantly I open my mouth.

“Max and I are-” I begin, but the words catch in my throat. Push, Chloe! “Max and I are dating.” I say. The air sort of electrifies and I feel all of the possibilities that this situation brings. Fuck, dude. What if they hate me? What if they take Max away? Can they even do that? They can’t, because we’re adults. Fuck this. We can run away if they hate us. Get married in Fiji. Who needs ‘em? 

“When did this happen?” Vanessa finally says, and I can’t tell if she’s happy or not. Can’t tell what that tone in her voice is. I can’t even look at her. 

“This morning, officially.” Max says, confidently. I look up and see that Vanessa is smiling.

“Oh that’s so wonderful!” Vanessa chimes, but then almost immediately gets quieter. She looks over at her husband who is in turn looking at Joyce and David. David has a look on his face like he’s constipated, not quite the look he gets when he’s mad, but something like it.

“Yes! That’s really great, I think.” Ryan says, and I’m thankful because even if he doesn’t mean it he’s at least taking some of the tension out of the room. Fuck man, movies don’t prepare you how awkward it is to tell your parents that you’re dating your best friend who is also the same gender as you. 

“I…” David begins, but he trails off, and then I finally realize what that look on his face is: embarrassment. “I thought you two were already dating, actually.” When he says that I feel so happy I could crap. So relieved, but nervous. The weight lifts off of my chest and I feel a new one settle in. There’s almost nothing left to distract Max and me from the aftermath of the storm. Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an interlude, the real deal chapter two is going to be longer.


	3. In Our Bedroom After the War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Chloe have sex and take stock of what they've done.

They were willfully blinding themselves. It had been a week since Arcadia Bay had become a past tense town on the Wikipedia page, and they still hadn’t answered any cell phone calls from anyone but their parents, unless it was the first one. They’d pick up, say they were alive, and then tell the other person that they would call them back when they could. Max and Chloe both thought that this was a reasonably cruel thing to do, but that didn’t matter to either of them right now. Nothing mattered but the two of them.

Chloe had rented an Airbnb, a whole house, at Max’s request. It was a nice place, up in Portland, not terribly far away, but far enough that they could both forget for the moment. It wasn’t a spectacular apartment, but it was nice enough. As far as Max was concerned four walls, a roof, and a bed would have been enough. It could have had a dirt floor, she didn’t care. 

She was standing in the bathroom, in the outfit she had been wearing for the evening, looking at herself. She was nervous. Terrified even. Not at the prospect of losing her virginity, or losing it to Chloe, both prospects thrilled her, no, she was afraid of her performance. She didn’t know what she was doing. She’d only ever fooled around with one person, and that had been a guy back in Seattle, and he had been just as inexperienced as her. But Chloe had at least one confirmed, long term, sexual partner in Rachel Amber. 

Rachel Amber.

A part of Max hated her. Hated being in her shadow. Hated how much Chloe had loved her. Hated her for all of it. She didn’t hate her though, not really. She had been there for Chloe, maybe even saved her life. She had definitely helped during their adventures, the doe which Max was now convinced was Rachel. No, she was jealous of Rachel, but she didn’t hate her.

She hated herself, for leaving Chloe alone for so long, for not telling her how much she loved her sooner, for not running over as soon as she got back to Arcadia Bay and begging for forgiveness. She hated herself for letting five years go by without a word. She wanted to explain it to Chloe, still, even though it hardly mattered now. She wanted so much to be different. She even wanted Rachel Amber to still be alive, even if it was competition, she was certain it would be better than the alternative.

But now wasn’t the time. She and Chloe had gone to dinner, a nice dinner, they had both dressed up well for it. Max was wearing a fitting pale pink dress, a nice cardigan to guard against the cold, and a necklace she had borrowed from her mom. For all the world, she looked like a normal girl on a date. And Chloe. Oh, God, Chloe. She had worn a suit, tight and sleek in all the right places, Max had been struggling to keep her eyes where they belonged all evening, and now they were back and she didn’t need to. She was sure that as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom Chloe would be taking her clothes off. She knew it. 

Of course, Chloe would stop if she asked her to, but she didn’t want that. She wanted her brain to turn off. She could feel there, in the back of her mind, everything that had happened in all of those infinite timelines, all the times Chloe had died, all the times she had watched her friends die, all the times she had died. 

In her dreams Arcadia Bay was still burning. In her dreams everything was burning. In her dreams the world around her was black with soot, and charred bone, and there was nothing alive anymore. She could still hear the screams, the cracking of wind and rain, could still hear the gunshot as Chloe fell in the bathroom, and then again in the junkyard. It was all still there, like a splinter.

But it wasn’t what she was going to focus on now. No. She was here with Chloe, her girlfriend, and they were going to be happy. They had the place for the whole weekend, and Max and Chloe weren’t going to leave the bed until Sunday afternoon if they could help it. They would order in for food, and shower together, and make love until they were too sore to continue. Max wasn’t ever going to let her go again, and this was how they were going to start it. Not with that storm, with this weekend.

She crossed the bathroom and at the door she made a choice. She stepped out of her dress and gave herself one last look in the mirror. Her underwear matched. She looked good. She confidently marched out of the bathroom and into the living room, where Chloe stood. 

Chloe had stripped her jacket off, and was, at the moment when Max walked out of the bathroom, in the process of rolling up her sleeves. One was already done up, but the other was only half up, and judging by the look on Chloe’s face that was as far up as it was going to get. Her eyes went up and down Max, her mouth half open, her fingers now fumbling. Max walked confidently across the room and began undoing the buttons on Chloe’s shirt.

“Holy shit.” Chloe said breathily. Max stood on her tip toes, the top four buttons on Chloe’s shirt undone, enough to slide her hands onto her bare shoulders for support, hoping that Chloe wasn’t noticing the slight unsure tremor in her movements, how she had fumbled with the buttons. Her lips were so close to Chloe’s they may as well have already been kissing.

“Kiss me.” Max whispered. So Chloe did. She wrapped one hand around Max’s bare waist, trailing her fingers through her underwear, and with the other hand she held Max’s face tenderly. Their lips met slowly, feeling things out. Max moved her hands up into Chloe’s hair, moaning softly as Chloe pulled her closer.

“Tell me you love me.” Max said, and Chloe stopped for a moment, looked at her in the eyes, stopping. It wasn’t hesitation, it was the desire to imbue the moment with all of the meaning and desire and love that so many years of being in love carried.

“I love you, Max Caulfield.” She said.

“I love you, Chloe Price.” 

 

Max slipped into Chloe’s arms, a fine layer of sweat covering her whole body, and Chloe’s as well. They were both breathing heavily, hair wild, necks and chest marked here and there with little bite marks and hickies, and Max knew without even looking that Chloe’s back was lined with scratch marks – a habit Max hadn’t been aware that she had. Chloe ran a hand through Max’s hair absently, smoothing it. The sheets had long ago been kicked to the floor, not that either of them wanted to pull the blankets up given how hot their movements had made the air of the room. 

“You’re getting pretty good. Like compared to Friday.” Chloe said, breathlessly. Max giggled and straddled Chloe’s hips, sitting back up on top of her feet. Chloe put both of her hands out and Max too them, absently kissing Chloe’s knuckles, examining her girlfriend. Max tried to think about all of the people she had ever been attracted to, and people like Chloe never came to mind. In Seattle she had been exclusively attracted to artsy, indie people like herself – like her friend Kate, but here was Chloe, blue hair, tattoos, nipple-piercings – another thing Max hadn’t been aware of when she took of Chloe’s bra – and Max couldn’t imagine ever being attracted to anyone else ever again.

“Getting? I don’t know what you mean. I’ve had hundreds of sexual partners. Maybe even thousands.” Max said, shrugging absently. Chloe chuckled, sitting up, wrapping her hands around Max’s waist and kissing her chest.

“Oh yeah? Like Warren?” Chloe teased between. Max made a fake gagging sound.

“No way! Not even in jokes!” Max said. She ran her hands through Chloe’s hair. “Warren is way too nice. He’s like a little brother. An annoying little brother.” They both rather hastily dropped the subject of anyone else specifically, when Max realized that she didn’t really know the status of anyone else. The pang of guilt came back to her for the first time that weekend.

“I was your first though, right?” Chloe asked, looking up at her. Max looked down at her girlfriend and nodded.

“You stole my virtue. I was good and unsullied before you came along.” Max teased, and Chloe rolled her eyes. “You! An experienced lover and me, a poor innocent! This is so predatory. Like for real, get me outa here.” 

“I’ll have you know, turd, that…” Chloe blushed fiercely in the face of Max’s gaze, and averted her eyes back down to Max’s chest. Max tipped her chin back up, curious to hear what Chloe was blushing about.

“You’ll have me know?” She prompted. Chloe blushed.

“Being with you!” Chloe blurted. “It feels like…idk man, it feels like we’re not just fucking, it’s like we’re…making love.” As soon as she said it Max could practically see the steam shooting out of her ears. She fell backwards onto the pillow, covering her eyes with her arm, hiding her blush, but above her Max only smiled like an idiot.

“Chloe Price, are you saying that I’m special?” Max said, faux-shock in her voice. Chloe shot back up at once, putting both hands on Max’s face and ensuring that their eyes were locked in a move which max squeaked at the suddenness of. Chloe had this intense look on her face, like what she was about to say was meaningful. Like on their first night here, when she had told Max that she loved her. 

“You are! No one else ever felt like this. It was never making love like this.” Chloe said, sounding certain of herself even as she was blushing. Max kissed her lightly on the mouth. She was still smoking, but she was obviously making an effort with how much she was brushing her teeth, and it was valiant, although Max – to her own horror – didn’t mind the taste. 

“How many…I mean before me?” Max asked, hoping Chloe got the question.

“Three.” She said. “I hope that’s not-”

“No, I was just curious.” Max said. She wanted to ask who they were, or at least if she knew any of them. She wanted to know how she stacked up. Had Chloe ever done this before? Spent a whole weekend away in a nest like this? They’d been shacked up for two days, they’d have to leave in a few hours, but Max was still jumping at the chance to be touched by Chloe, anywhere, everywhere. However she wanted. There wasn’t a part of her that Chloe hadn’t kissed or licked or touched over the past two days, and she was still eager to let her continue her exploration.

“Rachel, and…?” Max left the question open, worried she had said the wrong thing.

“Oh.” Chloe said, looking vaguely worried.

“You don’t have to…it was stupid don’t worry.” Max said quickly.

“No, it’s fine, Rachel, and this guy at a party once, and then uhm…you know…Victoria Chase.” She said the last name quickly, her gaze down, and Max couldn’t believe it. If you had given Max a list of names of people and asked her to sort them into ascending order of likelihood that Chloe would ever sleep with them in a million years, Victoria Chase would be at the very absolute bottom, sorted onto her own list of impossible things that could never happen.

“You’re being quiet dude, I’m freaked.” Chloe said.

“Sorry I just…never even considered it!” Max said.

“It’s not put you off right? It was only once, and…” Chloe trailed off when Max lightly kissed the top of her head, being careful to put her chest right in Chloe’s face for maximum stopping power. 

“It’s just surprising, I don’t love you any less or whatever.” Max said. In truth, she was jealous, but not upset. She was jealous of anyone who had ever even kissed Chloe, much less slept with her, and now she had another thing to factor in when trying to decide how she feels about the Queen Bee of Blackwell. She was an asshole, but she was also just a scared and immature kid, and also she had slept with her girlfriend at some point. A confusing set of traits. 

“But I mean it!” Chloe said, burying her face in Max’s insubstantial chest, kissing the bare skin. “I mean it, it feels different with you.”

“Less kinky?” Max teased, and Chloe immediately scoffed.

“Dude no way, are you kidding, you’re mad kinky!” Chloe said, and Max thought of all the things she and Chloe had been doing all weekend, and at length she took one of Chloe’s hands in her own and moved it eagerly to her throat, where Chloe gently squeezed. “Already?” Chloe asked and Max nodded. 

“Less kinky, she says.” Chloe said as she flipped Max onto her back.

 

Chloe and Max stood naked in the bathroom, both now in various states of contended soreness, brushing their teeth. The lighter roots in Chloe’s hair were beginning to show, and Max wondered absently if she died it on her own or if she had it done professionally. It looked good, but Max couldn’t imagine Chloe in a hair salon. She imagined her chopping off her hair in the bathroom with a pair of kitchen shears. 

Max examined both of their bodies in the mirror, not in a sensual way, more in the way that a crime scene investigator might look at a corpse. It looked like they had been in a series of fist fights. Chloe’s back was scratched up, bite marks and hickies on her neck and chest and thighs, a bruise on her forearm where Max had squeezed her hard during one of her more intense finishes. 

As far as her own damage, her wrists were bruised, as well as a small bruise on her neck, which was also covered in bite marks and hickies, and she knew there was a bump on the back of her head from when she had told Chloe to go harder, but there wasn’t any more room to go, so Max had bumped her head against the wall, a few times actually. Chloe had come prepared, which was good, because Max’s appetite for her girlfriend wasn’t sated, she was just physically unable to continue at that point. 

“I better stop being sore quick.” She said, spitting toothpaste into the sink and rinsing out her toothbrush and her mouth. Chloe balked at that, looking at her like she was absolutely crazy.

“Dude, we just fucked for like two days.” Chloe said, and Max shrugged. “You’re going to break me in half.” Max wrapped her arms around Chloe’s back and kissed her gently at the top of the scratches.

“No, you’re going to break me in half, actually.” Max said, and Chloe, spitting into the sink, faked shock.

“Who would have thought you were so lustful, Max?” She said, and Max thought about how badly she had wanted her all week while she was rewinding and saving people. 

“I mean, maybe if you’d paid attention on that day we kissed…” She teased.

“Did you rewind that?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah. To do it more than once.” Max said.

“Have you rewound since…you know?” Chloe asked, and Max shook her head. More than once she had been tempted to try it, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to fuck anything up.

“No, and I’m never going to again.” Max insisted. She wanted to know, really, more than anything, if it even still worked, if she even could rewind, but at the same times she was afraid to know. 

After they packed they loaded back up into Chloe’s truck and sat in the drive way for a few minutes. They stared at the mostly crummy apartment where they’d made their love nest for the weekend, and Max found herself very badly wanting to stay. She didn’t want to go back home. There was nothing for her there but finding out the truth of what the damage had been. Neither of them had any excuse left. They had to look at it. What they had done.

On the drive home they were both nearly silent, until finally, fifteen minutes from the elementary school, from where all the lists were, Chloe turned off the radio. She drove more slowly until she finally pulled off to the side of the road, seemingly without any real intentionality to it.

“I love you, Max.” She said. “I love you more than anything, more than I could ever say, you’re all that…I know that you did this to save me, and I just…it’s not your fault. It’s mine. It’s me.” Chloe said, and Max could see something rising up in her. She unbuckled herself and moved over, putting her hands on Chloe’s shoulders and kissing the back of her neck. 

“I love you, Chloe, and this isn’t your fault. We couldn’t know what would happen, even if I went back and you died, this could still all go down the same way. Time travel is too dangerous to fuck with, Chloe.” Max said it, and meant it all. She wouldn’t rewind ever again, even if it was a quarter of a second. She had done something, had destroyed something and the universe had reset itself, and now she wasn’t ever going to tangle with it again. 

“I made my choice and my mistakes. I was stupid. I was childish and people are dead, and this is my fault. And I have to live with that.” Max said forcefully, she was crying, she knew she was, but she didn’t let Chloe see. Just kept kissing her neck. 

The lists of the dead and missing were long, and Max and Chloe read each and every one of their names over and over and over again until they were memorized. They found the names of people they knew. Victoria Chase was missing, so was Warren. Frank was confirmed dead. Chloe’s skater friends were missing. Principal Wells was dead. Blackwell had been right in the storm’s path. 

There had been 4,157 people in and around Arcadia Bay before the storm, and the lists of dead and missing came up to 2,745 people. Max spent two days with them. With the names. Chloe tried more than once to pull her away, Kate even came by to check up on her, but she wouldn’t move. She was fully aware of whose responsibility it was to remember all these names. She had killed them, after all.

There were pictures too, of all the bodies which were unidentified or unclaimed, homeless people mostly who were listen as John or Jane Doe. Max asked one of the people who’s job it was to man the lists, what would happen to these dead.

“Well, in three years, all the bodies that aren’t claimed will be cremated, and then a bunch of priests and monks and all will come up and do last rights, and the ashes will be buried.” He said, offhandedly. He hadn’t said a word to Max or Chloe, despite the two of them being near him constantly for several days. 

“And anyone is allowed to be there? To pay their respects?” Max asked, and the guy shrugged.

“Sure.” He said, probably more than a little creeped out by the two girls who spent their time memorizing the list. 

One thing that Max kept thinking while she was sitting there, reading the lists like she had a test on their contents later that day, was how stupid it all was. How stupid and random. She had been a hero to a stranger in a bathroom, and then she couldn’t bear to be anything but to her, and now almost three thousand people were dead because she was unwilling or unable to give up her girlfriend. 

Humans, she thought, are stupid and petulant and they’ll let a whole town die if it means they get to kiss the pretty girl who they have a crush on. She laughed at it all then. The many prospects of the future, what if Chloe died in a car crash tomorrow? What if their relationship didn’t work out? What if Max had brain cancer and that’s what gave her the super powers? She had killed three thousand people and she was now sat in a chair with a list of their names, no more answers than she had had two weeks ago, and considerably more questions.

“Chloe?” Max said, after four days with the lists, only giving them up to the people who needed them to identify their loved ones. Chloe, who was sitting on the floor next to Max, reading a book – a habit had picked up at some point during the time Max had been reading the lists – looked up.

“Yeah?” She said. Max saw the title of the book she was reading. The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry. 

“We should go on that road trip. You mentioned it, remember? Wanting to go? Let’s do it.” So they did.


	4. Never Let Me Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max can see the future, and Kate gets a girlfriend.

In Max’s dreams there were worms eating the sky. The people below the sky, in the town, were looking up at the worms, and wondering what to do. The people in the town came to a conclusion regarding the sky-worms. The conclusion was this: to stop the sky-worms from eating up the sky and their town and maybe the whole world, they had to feed the sky-worms something better than any of those things. They decided to feed the sky-worms a girl from the town. That girl was Chloe Price.

The town had a bank, and two schools, as well as a prestigious academy of arts. It had a good diner, and a less good diner. It had people who loved the town and each other in equal measures to how much some of them hated each other, and the town, and other things too. Some people in this town would be better of elsewhere, and some of them would be better off dead. Some people in this town were children, too young to even speak. The town was, for all intents and purposes, just another town.

So the town, which was just another town, came to Max Caulfield, who was the only person who could get close to the sky-worms, and they said as one: “Max! We want to save our schools and our banks and the good people and the bad people and the good diner and the not so good diner! We have decided to do this by feeding this girl to the sky-worms. This girl is what they really want.” And Max looked at each town person, and then at the girl they wanted to feed to the sky-worms, and knew that it was all true. 

Chloe Price, who the townspeople had bound and gagged and made to look plump and delicious like a pig to be served at an ancient feast, didn’t say much of anything until Max went over and took the apple out of her mouth and asked her: “And how do you feel about this?” She said.

“I’d really rather not die.” Chloe said. Max looked at the townspeople, at all of them, at her friends and enemies and the evil people and the good people and the people who were children and the people who were very near the natural end of their lives. There were a lot of them. Over four thousand, but they all agreed that it must be done to save themselves. Surely, the townspeople thought, one girl was not equal in value to all of them!

Max, however, disagreed. She would not have traded Chloe for all of the proverbial tea in China. So, one by one, Max looked at the faces of all of the townspeople, and one by one, she killed half of them, with her bare hands. The townspeople stood there and watched and were unsettled, but when they were passed over for death they were relieved. When the sky-worms saw this they were also unsettled, and left the town alone, except for its buildings which they ate up.

Now there was no town, and only half the townspeople were still alive, but Max had Chloe and she thought that that was a fair price to pay for her love. 

The town was Arcadia Bay. The townspeople were her real friends. The sky-worms were tornadoes.

In Max’s dreams, she felt no guilt.

Max woke up next to Chloe, in a hotel off of 3rd and Lincoln where the beds were stiff, but the room was clean and that was good enough. They’d been on the road for three weeks, and had made it down the coast and then east through Nevada, the Four-Corners region, and were now squarely in the nowhere part of the middle of the United States, where nothing seems as solid as it does on the coasts. 

Chloe smelled like cigarettes and the slight twinge of weed, which she shared with Max the night before. They had seen the Grand Canyon, and were now on there way to the deep south, because Chloe wanted to eat hush puppies and Max wanted to see New Orleans. They were happy. Unreasonably happy. They had started answering calls from people now, but regretted to inform everyone that they wouldn’t be coming to funerals.

Max and Chloe were rebuilding not only their town, but their whole nation, their world, their universe. They were building this off of one another. They would be a universe comprised of two people, who would both eventually have to finish school, and get jobs, and find a house, and by a half a dozen dogs, but until then, they were free to roam around as long as the money lasted. Chloe got an undercut. Max got a tattoo on her forearm of a doe. They made love constantly.

Max and Chloe developed, among other things in their universe, a language. This language was so consistently confusing to the outside observer that many people who witnessed it being spoken were confused to the point of frustration, where even later in the day they would still be thinking of these two girls. The language was this:

Max and Chloe would not speak mundanities out loud, so much as one would begin a sentence and the other would fill it in. Max, waking up, would say, “Would you?” And Chloe would say, “Yeah.” Then she would make coffee, and say, “Any?” And Max would say, “One and two.” And Chloe would bring her a coffee with two sugar packets and a splash of soy milk. This language was not unknown to other couples, but Max and Chloe spoke it almost at once, and they were fluent.

They shared, along with this language, a private and impenetrable grief. Max would, at the drop of a hat, become quiet, and Chloe would move to her side, and envelope her in a hug, or kiss her face, or touch her hair. They would whisper, and Chloe would kiss her. This happened mostly in the mundane places of the world. At grocery stores or in malls or at tourist traps. At nights, Chloe would occasionally begin crying, silently, or very nearly so. Max would kiss the tears off of her cheeks. They were a perfect self-sustaining organism.

Joyce and David would call, and Vanessa and Ryan, and Kate, and Alyssa, and Brooke, and they would take turns on the phone, and send pictures, and Max would ensure everyone that they were safe and happy, and Chloe would ensure everyone that she was driving safely. They planned to be home before Christmas, or before New Years Day anyway. They wanted to see the states.

“What about when you get home?” Joyce asked constantly. 

“What are you two going to do?” Vanessa asked.

They were going to finish school, both of them, Max assured Chloe’s family. They were going to go to school somewhere on the East Coast, maybe in New York, and they would get an apartment, and a cat, and they would be happy together.

“Don’t you think,” Vanessa asked Max once, when Chloe wasn’t around the phone to hear it. “That you and Chloe might be moving a little fast?” 

This question struck Max as odd. She and Chloe had spent lifetimes together in other timelines, months or years by her reckoning at times. They had spent five years apart in this timeline, but more than twice that together as children. It made sense to move fast, to them. They had so much time to make up for. 

“I love her.” Max said, matter-of-factly, like that would be more than enough to explain everything. I love her, she should have said, and we’ve been to Hell and back together, and she’s all that’s keeping me afloat right now, and there’s so much between us that you could never understand, but the idea that we’re moving fast is insane. We’re not moving fast enough, if anything. 

Max didn’t want to control Chloe, or take up her whole life, or destroy her and make her anew, of course. What Max wanted was for her and Chloe to become one person, to be closer than was reasonably possible. When they kissed, Max got the urge to bite down hard, to never let Chloe go. 

In their lovemaking, Max and Chloe would slip into modes where it was like one was trying to destroy the other. Max would desperately tear at Chloe, and bite, and kiss her like she was a fox biting off its leg to escape a trap. Chloe would throw Max up against walls, and choke her, and lift her up and throw her down. More than once they got the urge to hit a wall, or the bed, never each other, but to hurt something. It was some animal instinct that they indulged but didn’t understand.

Often their lovemaking would end in tears of joy on Max’s part. Chloe would hold her, and Max would cum and cry and tell Chloe how much she loved her. This part of their language was never shortened, and was always indulgent. Max would tell Chloe everything she felt.

In general, Max told Chloe everything. They would never have a thought that they didn’t share, or at least feel safe sharing. Once, on the drive, Chloe said, apropos of nothing: “I don’t think that the Beatles are really that good.” And Max nodded her head and asked why. It was not her place to rebuke or agree, she was only in the position of asking why. Their language was like that. They knew, by tone, by inflection, when the other was beginning a conversation and when the other had something they needed to spew out and not be judged harshly for. 

They made up for the five years apart as best they could, and almost imperceptibly Max explained herself one morning, this morning, the morning when they lay in a bed in a clean motel off of 3rd and Lincoln. Chloe was spread out all over the bed, one arm and one leg across Max, face turned the other way.

“Chloe?” Max said. 

“Unh?” Chloe said. 

“I’m sorry.” She said. 

“F’what?” Chloe mumbled, turning her face towards Max, but keeping her eyes closed.

“I abandoned you. For five years, I mean. I didn’t…I wanted to call or write, but I didn’t…at some point it became…” She trailed off. She had practiced this in her head, and it didn’t go like this. Chloe’s eyes opened languidly, and in the pre-dawn light Max thought they sparkled spectacularly. Max went on.

“At some point, I just couldn’t bear to write back, it had been so long, and I had been so horrible. God, Chloe, I…” The words caught in Max’s throat, and Chloe shifted herself so that she was on her back and she pulled Max in on top of her, cradling her, putting her head on her chest. Chloe yanked up the sheets and comforter, so they were more completely covered. She kissed Max’s hair.

“We’re together now.” Chloe said.

“I know, but, I was so horrible to you.” 

“You’re forgiven.” Chloe said, as if it was obvious. “You’ve been forgiven for years now, Caulfield.” 

The morning passed by almost without further comment. Max kissed Chloe lightly on the neck, and fell asleep again in that position, with her lips pressed to Chloe’s neck. In Max’s dreams, she saw the future. The future was this:

She was standing, barefoot, in a warm, grassy meadow. In the meadow chairs were set up facing her, and the chairs were filled with her friends and family. Her mother was in the front row of chairs, next to her father, who was next to Joyce, who was next to David. Her mother and David were crying, although David was trying to pretend he wasn’t. In the next row, Victoria sat, who looked no worse for the wear, despite the fact that she was plausibly dead.

Next to Max was Chloe, who was wearing a thin, white dress against the implausible heat of the grassy meadow. Next to her also was Kate, who was beaming and looking at Max like this was the happiest she had ever been. Max was also wearing white. Chloe’s hair was no longer blue, but was instead back to its natural honeyed brown, and she wore a necklace that looked fabulously expensive, and she had several more tattoos. 

“Max,” Kate said. “Do you have the rings?” She had a bible in her hands, and she looked startlingly official. She was officiating. 

And then Max woke up. Chloe was already awake, making coffee in her underwear and wearing Max’s shirt which was far too small for her, but seeing her in it made Max’s heart race.

“Chloe?” Max said.

“Made some.” Chloe said. 

“Oh, thanks,” Max said, as Chloe turned and handed her a cup of coffee. “I was thinking, we should call Kate. I think Victoria is alive.” As if on cue, the phone rang, and that was the case.

“Oh my, Max!” Kate said. “They found Victoria! She was trapped under a house! She’s alive, and breathing, and awake! Oh my, you – please – Max, you have to come see her!” There was a hectic note in Kate’s voice, a worried, hurried tone. 

“They found her last night, she’s doing well, but you simply have to come see her!” Kate went on, and then she gave Max the number and name of the hospital in Portland where they had taken Victoria, and Max and Chloe set out that day, not to return home, but to briefly delay their trip to the deep south.

While Max and Chloe were on the road, this happened.

Kate insisted that she be with Victoria as often as possible. Not many people from Blackwell Academy were alive or around, so it made sense that she be there for her, despite everything that had happened. So Kate said. Victoria agreed that Kate should be there, but got nervous and shifty whenever Kate looked at her too long. Her face was badly bruised, and she would have a few scars of note visible on her lip, chin, nose, and forehead, but besides that she would walk away with only stories to tell of how she had survived under a house by drinking muddy water which leaked in, and how no one had heard her calling until a rescue dog came by almost a month after the fact. She had nearly died, but somehow, miraculously, Kate said, she survived.

Kate was, obviously, very attracted to Victoria. This fact came as a shock to Victoria who thought that Kate was almost certainly spending time with her in order to smother her to death in her sleep. The two had never been on friendly terms, and Victoria had done things so outright heinous that it made her sick to think about now. Her friends were dead though, and she wouldn’t bemoan Kate’s presence.

The way they came to be dating was this:

In the five days it took Max and Chloe to have a relaxed drive back home, Kate and Victoria had fostered between them a sort of vague tension. Kate wanted Victoria to be as attracted to her as she was to Victoria, and Victoria wanted Kate to explain why she didn’t hate her. Neither of them said this out loud, but at one point, when Victoria was half asleep, she woke up to find Kate folded up in a chair, reading a book to herself, her lips moving silently with the words. The book was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

“I love that book.” Victoria said. Kate looked up at her, rather surprised. She closed the book slowly, setting it down with great care. Kate was like this with books and other precious things. She did not fold the spine or the pages, she did not open the book more than 100 degrees in fact. She treated each book like a precious container which she dare not damage.

“Me too, how do you feel?” Kate asked. Victoria sat up. She was sore, and tired, and her face hurt, but the swelling was beginning to go down.

“How do I look?” Victoria said. She had meant to load it with venom and bile, not at Kate, but at the situation in general. She hated being laid up in bed. She wanted to leave, and be free, and not have ant scars. She had already begun plotting how and when to get plastic surgery to reduce or remove what scarring there would be.

“Beautiful.” Kate’s answer was so immediate, it made Victoria start, and when their eyes met, Kate’s face was already lighting up red. She fidgeted with the cuff of her sweater, and made some noises that might have been deflections, but came out as mumbles instead. 

“What?” Victoria asked dumbly. 

“I mean, like, the bruises and cuts and stuff are rough, but it doesn’t change…you know? You’re still…beautiful.” Kate said, getting quieter as she went. Victoria noticed, not for the first time, the glint of the sunshine playing off of the cross Kate wore, the freckles on her cheeks, the way her eyes danced off of everything in the room. The word for what Victoria was feeling, not for the first time, was attraction.

“I was so awful.” She said.

“What was? Under the house?” Kate said, mishearing what Victoria had said.

“No, I was. To you I mean. To everyone, but especially to you.” Victoria said fast. She meant it too, but she didn’t apologize just yet. Neither she nor Kate had even mentioned the past in the days she had been back in the world of the living. Everything seemed so trivial now.

“It’s okay.” Kate said.

“No, it’s not, Kate, I…I’m sorry.” Victoria said, and Kate waved a hand in the air as if to dismiss the notion that Victoria had ever tormented her in any way. It did all seem so silly now, but at the time it hadn’t. At the time, Kate had wanted badly to die. She had wanted to die even more because she had been attracted to the person who had been leading her gang of tormentors. In her fantasies it was the absolute darkest form of the “person A teases person B because they like them” trope. 

“It’s okay, Victoria.” Kate said.

“Why?” Victoria snapped, her voice loaded, her heart angry. She was furious with herself for ever having hurt Kate. Her cruelty was disgusting, and she hated herself for it. Hated herself for all the awful things she had ever done to anyone, but especially to Kate, who had never deserved even a fraction of what happened to her.

“Because you’re apologizing and I’m forgiving you.” Kate said. The way she said it, the calmness in her voice, the stillness of the smile on her face, made Victoria’s heart leap. This had been happening with a startling regularity for Victoria’s liking. 

Victoria flopped back onto the bed, one hand on the side of her face which she could reasonably touch without causing her head to spin from the pain. She heard Kate shuffle, and when she looked back over she was smiling with satisfaction and reading again. Victoria watched her for a moment, for long enough to be certain that Kate must have felt her gaze.

“You could read to me.” She said. “If you wanted to.” Victoria said, and Kate looked up at her, surprised. She got up and sat down on the edge of the bed, by Victoria’s feet. Victoria felt a pang of irritation that she wasn’t sitting closer.

“‘But to explain what we were talking about that evening, I’ll have to go back a little bit. In fact,’” Kate began, reading from the point in the book she had already been. Kate read on like this for fifteen minutes or more, and Victoria was lulled by her voice. Kate settled in, lounging on the bed, close enough that Victoria could touch her hair, and she did, she ran her fingers through it and found that it was pleasing to the touch.

At length, she spoke again, interrupting Kate.

“You could kiss me.” She said. “If you wanted to.” And Kate did. 

Their progress was slow at first, halting, trying to avoid the parts of Victoria that would hurt to touch, but Victoria, more than Kate, found a sudden desire in her belly. Kate had had the desire there for months now, but Victoria’s was sudden, and hungry, and Kate tasted the way that she imagine Kate should, and she found herself content. They kissed only for a while, tongues playfully experimenting, hands tentative in their exploration, but nothing more, until Kate pulled back, blushing tremendously. 

Kate had never kissed another person before, at least not when she was sober, and Victoria had never kissed someone like Kate before. Someone who made her feel like Kate made her feel in that moment. They laughed, and they kissed again, lightly, and by the time the day was over they had decided that the only reasonable course of action to take was to date one another. Victoria slept in Kate’s arms that night.

When Max and Chloe arrived, they did so in a spectacular fashion, on accident, but still spectacularly. Kate was kissing Victoria, and Victoria was kissing Kate, and Chloe threw open the door, proclaiming loudly: “What’s up, nerds?”

Which caused Kate to start and topple off of the bed, and which caused Victoria to shoot up so suddenly that she pulled the little monitors off of her fingers, causing a long and dull beep. Chloe, startled by what she had interrupted, stood dumbstruck. Max came in sheepishly behind her girlfriend and made sure that Kate was okay. 

“Price!” Victoria said. She had never been restricted to her bed, so she stood and helped Kate up. “Are you alright, kitten?” She said automatically, immediately regretting it when Chloe’s mouth twisted up into a grin. This was a nickname that had evolved in the past few days, and it had taken hold of Victoria so totally that she barely noticed it coming out. When Kate was up, and before Chloe could say anything, Max delicately through her arms around Victoria’s neck.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” Max said, and she meant it. Victoria hadn’t opened up to her, not in this timeline, but still, she knew it was in here. Victoria looked at Kate, shocked, and Kate smiled. 

“Yeah,” Said Chloe. “Me too, Chase.” Kate positively beamed, and Chloe came up next to her, poking her playfully in the side and winking. Kate blushed. 

The four of them sat in the room. Chloe had brought with her a smuggled, half empty bottle of white wine, and two fresh bottles of red. They closed the door. They laughed, and talked about the good people from the town. They talked about how shitty the storm was. They talked about how they had all found girlfriends, and how gay they all were. They joked about running away together and forming a commune of lesbians. They talked about politics and art and what it all meant. They got drunk.

When everyone was good and toasted, when Kate had fallen asleep in Victoria’s arms and when Chloe was desperately trying to explain to the two girl who remained conscious why she liked the work of Salvador Dali so much, Max spoke up.

“I can see the future.” Max proclaimed, and Victoria and Chloe laughed. “I can! And in the future, we’re going to get married, me and Chloe! And you’re going to be there, and Kate is going to officiate!” She declared it all, and Chloe blushed madly. After her proclamation Max shrugged noncommittally and curled up next to Chloe, asleep at once. 

Chloe looked at Victoria, half fogged with wine and love for her Max, and Victoria looked down at Kate, marveling. 

“We’re lucky.” Chloe said. 

“We are.” Victoria remarked. For a moment the air in the room became genial, and friendly. 

“Your face is busted.” Chloe said.

“Yours already was.” Victoria retorted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, they all gay, ya'll


	5. Count My Blessings: Interlude 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Victoria have a conversation

It’s winter now, and I’m standing in Victoria’s home in Seattle, watching Chloe vacuum the truck – which she insisted that I not help with. We want to get down to New Orleans by next week, we’ve already delayed so long. But it felt good to be with Victoria and Kate for a while. I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see Victoria, holding two cups of coffee. She’s been doing stuff like this, thoughtful stuff.

“Hey, Caulfield.” She says, handing me the mug. 

“Thanks.” I say, and we both turn to watch Chloe. She’s always been bad at this sort of thing, so it looks like she’s given up for the moment, instead she’s sitting in the bed of the truck, smoking. What a turd.

“Thanks for coming back.” Victoria says, and I look at her. She’s still as beautiful as she ever was, but now there’s scars on her chin, lip, nose, and forehead, that she insists she’s going to get taken care of, but I think they add character. 

“Had to make sure you were alright.” I say. “Plus, I couldn’t resist the call of lesbianism.” She blushes and averts her gaze off to the side, to a potted plant in the corner of the room right in the best bath for sunlight in this ludicrously large house. For real, it looks like something out of a movie. Huge and cleanly decorated and just this side of obnoxious. The excellent taste almost makes me gag.

“So…” Victoria says, and I know what she’s going to say because I’ve seen it. “You love her?” She means Chloe. She’s back to vacuuming now, probably doing a bad job, but it’s freezing out there, so I can’t say that I mind it too much. I nod.

“For years now, yeah. Since I was like…12.” I shrug. “And you and Kate?”

“Do I love her?” Victoria says, shocked that I would ask. They’ve been dating for less than a month.

“No, dude, but how’d that happen? You used to be kind of…”

“A bitch.” Victoria says. “I used to be a total bitch to her. I was horrible, I know.” I think of Kate standing up on the roof of the school, and how I managed to pull her back down. In that moment I felt some of the purest hate I had ever felt for a person – for Victoria – but now it had waned to nothing. I felt curious, more than anything.

“But you’re dating now.” I say, and she gets this small smile on her face that she doesn’t show off, like she’s keeping it to herself. 

“We are.” She says. “How did you know that you loved her?” Victoria says. Chloe is down by the truck yanking trash out from under the seats, stuff whose age I can only guess at, cigarette butts, food waste, baggies which used to contain who knows what. 

“I dunno, man.” I say, shrugging. She looks at me, obviously wanting a better answer. “I never had to think about loving her. Like, loving her was like…it was like…writing, you know? Like when you’re writing, you don’t think about the words or how they’re going down on the page, it just comes out of you. That’s how it is loving her. It just comes out of me.” Victoria looks at me and I wonder if that answer was satisfying.

“I haven’t seen you taking pictures. With your dweeby camera.” She says. 

“I lost it in the storm.” I lie. I didn’t lose it, I just hadn’t been using it. Hadn’t been looking for opportunities to use it. I felt drained of any desire to do anything but travel with Chloe. I was so tired. I couldn’t imagine taking pictures.

“Bullshit.” She says. 

“What?” I say.

“Can we skip the whole depressive survivor’s guilt whatever-the-fuck and get back to it?” She snaps. “Like you survived, and your friends didn’t. Whatever, but if you don’t get back to it then what’s the fucking point?” She was mad now, and I looked at her and I could see that she was tearing up. It was so easy to forget that almost all of her friends had died. Her best friend, Nathan Prescott, was not only dead, but a murderer and that was out now. 

I think about Warren. Somehow everything had come out more or less decently for me, a lot of my friends had survived, but now Warren. Not Rachel Amber. I think of Rachel dying, and for some reason it feels like a friend has died. And Warren. God Warren. He deserved better than he got. Better than dying in some no-name shithole town, pining over a girl who would never give him the time of day. 

“Listen, there’s a bag for you in the entryway. Take it before you leave, okay?” Victoria says, her voice calmer now, her eyes dry. I look at her and try to find something there, some sign of who she is now.

“You and Kate are going out tonight, right?” I say. She nods. 

“Yeah, there’s an exhibit downtown, and then dinner.” She says, and I imagine what Chloe would say if she were up here: ‘and theeeeeeeen?’

“And you’re going to be nice to her.” I say. Victoria looks at me.

“Duh.” She says, and I smile. It’s weird being friends with her. It’s weird being in her house. Everything is weird nowadays. It feels like I’m trapped between something. But I’ve seen this moment too, I know what’s going to happen. I hug Victoria and she hugs me back.

“Thank you.” I say.

“For what?” She asks, but I can’t tell her. I can’t put it into words. Don’t know how to count my blessings. Can’t count that high.


	6. The Sky on Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe and Max watch the sky burn and Chloe's truck gets stolen

Max Caulfield and Chloe Price each lacked something intrinsic to the human perception of a kind and caring universe. Without this specific thing a human being would find themselves lost, not for wont of anything meaningful to do, and not for wont of destination, rather, they would be lost spiritually. Bereft of the illusions that the universe was anything but random at best and cruel at worst. It was Max’s belief that the universe was cruel, and Chloe’s that it was random. What they lacked was this: ignorance.

Max had seen the deaths of her lover countless times, and fought tooth and nail to prevent it. She had killed people, thousands of them, to ensure her lover’s survival. She had the notion in her mind that every death attributable to the storm was in fact attributable to her. She also had the knowledge of the future. Her powers had shifted from the ability to move backwards in time to the ability to see into the future. This power was random, and happened in her dreams. In her dreams the future was mostly bright. Mostly.

Chloe had been killed dozens of times in different realities, and whether or not her mind remembered dying, her body did. She would wake up at odd hours and feel a strangeness in her, like a ghost. She too felt responsible for the deaths of those in Arcadia Bay. Max had been the arbiter of destruction, but she had been the reason for it. 

They never discussed this. It was, in fact, the only thing they did not discuss. They had tried, but each side was absolutely convinced of their guilt in the matter, and would hear nothing else. In fact, after they left Victoria’s home on the morning of December 1st, 2013, Chloe asked Max this: “Do you feel responsible for her? I mean her face. And being trapped under the debris and shit?” 

Max dawdled in the truck, picking at a hole in her jeans. She didn’t want to answer. Not because she didn’t know what the answer was (it was “yes absolutely.”) but because she knew that Chloe also felt responsible, and she didn’t want her to.

“Yeah.” Max said. 

“You didn’t do anything.” Chloe said.

“Neither did you.” Max said. Chloe nodded and shrugged and look for all the world like she was cycling through all of the facial expressions she knew. Max felt, not for the first time that day or that hour or that minute, a desperate love for Chloe. The sort of love that make people do incredibly stupid things. Max had never loved another person in the way that she loved Chloe, and she was sure that she never would again. She wanted to do something desperate and stupid to match the ferocity with which she loved her. Anything would do, she just had to do it, or she was certain that she would burst for all the love inside of her.

Chloe felt that sort of love too, but hers was built upon the knowledge that not only did the universe want her dead, but it had tried to kill her in an astounding and showy way, and she had the sneaking suspicion that it might do so again. That night in the hotel, Max slept against her, naked, small, and warm. Chloe stroked her hair and read. She had been doing that lately.

Max’s camera was on the bedside table, as of yet unused. It was a gift from Victoria. A nice film camera, one that Max would have to develop herself in a dark room. It came with a full kit and a variety of lenses, the sort of equipment that would cost thousands of dollars, but that Chloe was certain Victoria had just lying around the house. She was also certain that Kate had told her exactly what to buy. It was Max’s dream camera, and when she opened it she was nearly in tears. Chloe felt a deep appreciation for Victoria and Kate when she saw that camera.

The first picture which Max took with that camera was taken in hotel thirty miles outside of San Antonio Texas and can be described as this: Chloe Price, standing in a bathroom in Max’s shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, a toothbrush limp in her mouth, and her phone in her hands, texting her mother. The blue in Chloe’s hair, in the picture, is starting to leave the roots, and she has a fresh tattoo peaking out from under the shirt. It’s a blue butterfly on her ribcage. It hurt tremendously. 

“What was that?” Chloe asked, no longer used to the sound of camera shutters. Max was holding the camera in her hands though and her crime was evident. Chloe scowled. “I can’t even tell you to delete it.” She said, and Max stuck her tongue out. 

“You look good.” Max retorted. 

“Oh, yeah?” And before Max could respond, Chloe had thrown her phone and tooth brush down and snatched Max up into her arms. Max squealed, and Chloe went in for a kiss, but Max threw her hand up in between their mouths. 

“No way, Chloe! Spit!” Max said through laughter. Chloe groaned and without putting Max down walked back into the bathroom and leaned over the sink to spit. 

“Better?” She asked. Max screwed up her face.

“Smile.” She said. Chloe did so, and Max made a show of examining her girlfriend’s teeth. “Decent.” Max said, and they kissed. Kissing Chloe was, for her, a spiritual experience. She had known from the first time their lips met that there would never be another person who she wanted to kiss more. When they kissed it was hard, and wanting, never enough for either of them. And it almost always led to something more, as it did on this occasion. Max set her camera down as Chloe carried her to the bed, and they made love.

Chloe was a flamboyantly in love person. She would make it obvious to anyone who cared to look that she was in love, and with whom, and on many occasions why she was in love. In San Antonio, Texas Max and Chloe were walking through a grocery store, buying supplies for the next long stint of their long drive, and Chloe, hand in hand with Max, kissed her on the lips in the aisle of the store for no better reason than because she could, and Max blushed, and Chloe slung her arm around Max and led her through the aisles, making jokes about things and people in a fabulously loud way. 

Max envied her girlfriend this boisterousness, and wished she could do it, but never did. She showed her affections in different ways. Once, after they had made love, Max straddled Chloe’s back, ran her fingers over her skin, rubbing at knots and lumps in the musculature, delicately hurting her love.

“Am I any good at this?” Max asked. Chloe, who was purring like a cat, grunted that she was in fact excellent at it. “How’s the tattoo?” Max asked.

“Peeling.” Chloe said, and Max could see that it was. She was trying not to touch it with her leg, but it was large and often in the way. “How’s it look?” 

“Beautiful.” Max said, and it was. The artist had been reluctant to do it in a single, long session but Chloe had insisted, and to her credit she had sat still as a statue for six and a half hours, not including smoke breaks. It had turned out beautifully, astounding blues giving ways to lighter shades here and darker there, and linework that seemed to give way to nothingness, as if the creature was coming off of Chloe’s skin. Max marveled at it as often as she could.

“So, you can see the future right?” Chloe asked. They hadn’t talked much about it, not in the way that they had the first time. The revelation that Max’s abilities had developed passed without comment in the way that the Blitz passed largely without comment for those affected. The civilians simply disappeared underground until the bombs and planes had passed, and then they came out to survey the damage. There was little to say. Max and Chloe were currently waiting for the sirens to go off.

“Some things.” She said.

“Like Victoria being alive.” Max said. Chloe squirmed under her until they were facing each other, Max straddling Chloe’s waist. Neither of them had dressed. Max wore the imprint of Chloe’s teeth on her clavicle like a badge of honor.

“Come on though, what else?” Chloe pressed. Max thought of everything she had seen. It came in snippets. Like memories. She had seen their wedding. She felt the hug with Victoria. She had smelled the scent of her mother’s turkey. She could hear music playing. It was sights and sounds and scents and feelings, most of which she couldn’t place until they passed. 

“Most of it doesn’t make sense until it happens. I saw us getting married though.” Max said. Chloe blushed and Max cut her off because she knew what she was going to ask. “I knew it was ours and I knew it was the future because it’s exactly the sort of wedding I’ve always wanted and Victoria was there, looking exactly how she looks now.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a dream?” Chloe asked. “Maybe we don’t get married.”

“Do you not want to?” Max said.

“I mean…”

“And aren’t you going to give me exactly what I want?” 

“Yeah, but…”

“But you don’t want to get married yet.”

“Yeah!”

“Good, neither do I. We all looked older in my dream. You had an undercut. My mom had wrinkles. David had grey hair, and a beard.” Max said. Chloe visibly relaxed and Max smiled. “You know, weddings don’t happen to you, right? You have to consent.”

“I don’t know, man! Maybe you blackmail me! Or it’s a shotgun wedding because I get you pregnant!” 

“That would be a neat trick.” Max teased. A long moment passed where the obvious question bubbled to the surface in both of their minds but neither of them bothered to ask it because they both correctly assumed that they knew how the other person would answer. The question: do you want kids? The answer: not in this world. This was a side effect of the pieces that Max and Chloe were missing. Bringing up children in a world this insane, where the universe could seek to correct a catastrophic error by killing half a town, it seemed cruel to the child. Three months ago, they might have answered differently, but things were different now. They were different now. 

Max and Chloe set out the next morning in a vaguely eastward direction, stopping infrequently to go to the bathroom and stretch out and take pictures – which Max was doing with gusto now, mostly of Chloe, but also of whatever took her eye. The two of them were like pilgrims, in a way, not that they were yet aware of it. They were going to end up in New York City for New Years Eve, where they would spend the night in a police station. This is how they got there:

On the night of December 20th, the two were driving through the backwaters of Georgia, having departed New Orleans two days prior. They saw, from the old, derelict highway, a tree on fire. Around the tree they could see about a dozen firefighters, running around frantically. The fire was trying and failing to spread to the nearby brush, but in December, in the wet of the swamp, it hardly seemed too serious. Max noted that several of the firefighters were leaning against the truck, waiting for the fire to burn itself out. They pulled off to the side of the road to watch the tree burn.

This was something that Max had seen in her dreams. The sky was lit up orange, the entire world seemed to be burning with the tree. The firemen stood and smoked, teasing the younger people who were newer to the game, who didn’t know yet that there was nothing they could do to stop the thing burning. It was an old and dead tree, and it was time for it to go, it would seem. Chloe angled the truck so that they could sit and watch the thing burn. No one else was on the road with them. Just them and the people who were standing by and could do nothing. 

Max and Chloe knew, as they sat there watching that tree burn, that they might never make it back to their families in time for Christmas. It certainly seemed impossible then. They thought they might never make it home at all. What home, moreover? To what place should they return? Their homes had vanished with the death of the town and the death of childhood, respectively. Max turned to Chloe in that moment, in that aimless, wandering, roaming moment between childhood and adulthood.

“I love you, Chloe.” Max said.

“I love you, Max. So damn much.” Chloe said. This seemed, in that moment, impossible to Max. That Chloe could even be in the same room at all, that Chloe could find the grace to forgive her, it all seemed impossible. She knew how Chloe suffered without her, even with Rachel, there were parts of Chloe that Max had wounded tremendously. Max wondered if Chloe, the younger Chloe, hated her. The person who no longer existed. The person before the storm. The person with Rachel. The person to whom Max had never written, who Max had never called. She should, as far as Max was concerned. Max had done something awful to her. 

In Chloe’s mind, as she watched the tree burn, she felt like an animal which had escaped from its cage. She felt free. On the road, in the infinite expanse of the burning United States of America, Chloe felt free for the first time in her life. Everything felt shifted. The guilt was with her, would always be with her, but she didn’t mind the burden so much in that moment. She was free, and she was happy.

“Let’s spend Christmas in New York.” Chloe said.

“We can drive home for New Years.” Max agreed, even though she didn’t want to. They stayed until after the firefighters had left. They made love in the cab of the truck. Max, with Chloe holding her, too far gone to hold back her climax, said this: 

“I can’t be without you.” She said. It was a simple statement of fact. The way that one might observe the color of the sky, or the flavor of a drink. Chloe, without missing even a single breath, responded:

“You’ll never have to.” Chloe said, and she meant it. 

This, all of this, was of course a means of coping with something that Max and Chloe, unique to any other person on Earth, shared: absolute responsibility for an almost unfathomable loss, and the knowledge that it could happen again, and they would be responsible for that as well. 

A side-effect of this unfathomable grief compounded by guilt and dealt with through love, was that Chloe and Max each felt a drive to travel, to be constantly moving. Hotels seemed like home as long as each had the other. Pursuant to that, sitting there, wrapped tightly in one another against the cold, the remains of the tree now smoldering, Chloe and Max hatched a plan. The plan was this:

They would go to New York, and then drive home for New Years Eve, or at least New Years Day, and then they would get passports and board a plane to somewhere where the money they had saved up would take them far enough, and then they would find some means of paying for lodgings, and schooling, and they would become adults, separate from other people. They were exhausted by the thought of staying in Arcadia Bay, of staying in the PNW, of staying in The United States. This was the seed of their exodus, but it was not until they reached New York that they found a space to attach that seed.

In New York, from the lot at which she had parked, Chloe’s car vanished. It was a simple thing, really. On the ground there was broken glass, and in the space there was another, unrelated car. Chloe smoked a cigarette, and sat on their bags which thankfully hadn’t been in the truck, and Max did the only thing she could think to do, she took a picture, and a very foolish idea came into her head. She called Victoria. 

“Hey, Victoria, it’s Max.” 

At that moment, as far as one could be from Max in the contiguous United States, Victoria sat up in bed. Kate was drawing, and she had been, until that very moment, flipping through a magazine absently, trying to get a view of what it was that Kate was coloring in. 

“Max! Holy shit, what’s up?” It was 9pm where Victoria was, and she knew that Max was in New York. Alarm bells were already ringing. 

“Chloe’s truck got stolen.” Max said, and Victoria could hear Chloe swearing on the other end, probably stomping around too. Victoria tapped Kate on the shoulder and put the call on speaker.

“Oh my God!” Victoria said and Kate sat up, her ears practically perking. “Are you okay? Do you guys need anything?” Victoria was certain that Max was going to ask her, and she was practically already wiring it, but instead Max did something she wasn’t expecting.

“Do you know anyone in London? I mean, like, exhibitors?” Max asked. Victoria thought. Her parents did. They even had a stake in a few spaces out there, one specifically for photography.

“Yeah, sure, why?” Max felt the weight of her camera, heavy in her bag, and she looked at Chloe, who she had taken four rolls of since she got the camera. Four very expensive rolls.

“Chloe and I are going to fly back, we should talk when we get there.” There was a sort of moment of crystalizing clarity as Max sat on the phone, looking at Chloe. She had plenty of pictures of her. Pictures which, in her mind, were fantastic, and if they were going to leave why play it safe? They were lucky. They had places they could retreat to if they got defeated by the wide world.

The call ended summarily and Max sat next to Chloe, who was upset. 

“Fuck, man! My truck, that…fuck man.” Chloe said. Max put her arm around Chloe. They both knew it was gone. Trucks like that, old trucks, didn’t get found, and they had already called every towing company they could find online, and nothing. Just like that, a second home was gone. 

“We should go to London. Victoria knows people. I can show my photography.” Chloe looked at Max, thinking she was absolutely insane. Chloe had never dreamed of going that far.

“How much do passports cost?

They flew home two days later, to an airport in Seattle where their parents picked them up. Joyce and David were staying with the Caulfields for the moment, and with that everyone was together for Christmas. Landing felt like a strange anticlimax, like they had failed, but in her hands Max still held her large and expensive camera. And in their heads they had an idea.

“How do we tell them?” Chloe asked Max.

“More elegantly than we came out to them?” Max said with a shrug, shouldering her bag. They walked through security, hand in hand, and into their parents waiting arms. It would be their last return journey for three years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toot-toot all aboard the London train y'all


	7. Fuck you, Mr. Rosewater: Interlude 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very crappy Christmas party for Kate and Victoria

Kate stood in the broad valley created by the two massive staircases in the foyer of one of Victoria’s parents’ many lavishly wealthy friends. She was certain, when she saw Victoria’s home, that she had seen the absolute height of American luxury excepting perhaps those at the very top of the pile whose money was so ostentatious as to be unfathomable. And yet. Here she stood, in the foyer of a hideously adorned home, all white and gold for the holiday season, staring at the center piece of the room, which seemed to be – and was in fact – and original Rembrandt. 

Victoria walked up, wearing a Christmas sweater which fashioned itself as ugly, but was in fact form fitting and very attractive on her. Her hair was still short, shorter now than it had been in September, but still perfectly styled. She had stopped using makeup to cover the scars, as it was a losing battle, and Kate assured her the scars weren’t unattractive anyway. She handed Kate a mug of tea and they both looked at the painting.

“Is it real?” Kate asked. She had never had an eye for that sort of art, but the way it had been lit, the central focus, and the house it was in all suggested that it was in fact the real thing. Victoria nodded.

“It’s worth millions. Priceless really.” She said, sipping at her own tea. Kate had gotten her into the stuff. 

“Wow.” Kate said. They were in the house for a Christmas party, which was taking place in the adjacent room. In that room there was a grand piano, lavish decorations, people who talked about things like the shifting market in Chinese Taipei – these were the sort of people who called that lonely island of Taiwan, Chinese Taipei. They looked at her like she had wandered in off the street, and she found herself nauseated by their company. 

“Why are we here, again?” Kate asked. Victoria smiled.

“Because mother and father want to make me seen. Show off how I’m not dead.” She said it with a shrug. “And I want to show you off.” She finished, and Kate blushed. When they arrived, Victoria had made a point to introduce her to everyone, emphasizing their relationship. The looks in the room were a mix of confusion, revulsion, and irritation. 

“To make sure that you’ll never be invited back?” Kate asked.

“They have to invite me to these things. These people think their children are artists, so they need my parents. Doesn’t mean I have to like them or make them comfortable.” Victoria said. She set her mug down on a nearby table, taking Kate’s and doing the same. The table seemed strategically placed so that people viewing the painting could put down their drinks and marvel at it, their hands over their hearts in shock and bewilderment at the otherworldly beauty and talent of the painting and its maker. 

Victoria stepped in front of Kate and put on hand on her back, and with the other took her hand and propped it on her shoulder, tightening just a bit and adjusting so that they were in the perfect stance for a waltz. Kate blushed but went along with it, pulling herself up into an appropriate posture. 

“What’re you doing?” She said with a smile. Victoria led them slowly through the simple steps, her movements fluid and graceful, Kate’s more unsure. 

“Dancing.” Victoria said. “You can hear the music from the other room.” And when Kate strained her ears she could.

“I can play this.” She said. Kate had lost her violin in the storm, but she knew for a fact that Victoria had already bought her a replacement instrument for Christmas. Kate looked at her feet. “But I still can’t dance.” She said, laughing. Victoria smiled and stopped and looked up. Just there was strategically placed mistletoe, such that it was out of the way, but could still be easily reached. Kate looked at her girlfriend.

“May I?” Victoria asked.

“You may.” Kate said, affecting a posh accent. They kissed, and Kate loved it. She loved every moment and movement and brush. She loved Victoria’s hand cradling her cheek, and she loved the feeling of her soft, blonde hair between her fingers. 

Behind them there was a clearing of a throat, and they saw a very old man looking at them disdainfully. Behind him was a younger man and a woman who was either his sister or his wife – it was impossible to tell with these people. Kate went to pull apart, not embarrassed per se, but worried that this might in some way harm Victoria’s reputation. To her credit, Victoria held Kate loosely, and moved out of the way.

“Excuse us.” She said. The only thing they were blocking was one of the stair cases which led upstairs. The man huffed and turned and led the man and woman upstairs, quietly murmuring to them, casting glances at Victoria and Kate. 

“Who was that?” Kate asked.

“Noah Rosewater, his son Kurt, and his wife Penny. Old money, like way old, but Kurt thinks he’s a photographer so…” Victoria said, letting her sentence wander away from her.

“Is he?” Kate asked. 

“He steals most of his work. He’s a hack. A fucking coffee-table book masquerading as a person. I can take better pictures in my sleep than he could take in a thousand years, but daddy has a big bank account so sometimes he gets shown.” Victoria said, talking maybe too loudly. “The only solace is that when he gets write ups they’re awful. The ‘coffee-table book’ thing? I stole that from a journal in New York.” She said it gleefully. 

“Wait, is Penny Noah’s wife, or Kurt’s?” Kate asked, suddenly making the connection. In response Victoria grimaced. “Oh! Ew!” Victoria nodded and pulled her lips apart to show her teeth, a disgusted look if ever there was one. The pair went back to their mugs.

“I hate it here.” Victoria said.

“Me too.” Kate conceded.

“Want to leave?” Victoria asked.

“Oh my gosh, steal me away from this place, darling.” Kate said, once again affecting a posh accent. Victoria grabbed her hand and they were off, taking their mugs with them.


	8. Christmas Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Chloe have brief conversations with adults, and gifts are exchanged.

Max felt warm and safe in her mother’s arms. She felt a heaviness that she hadn’t felt since she was small, it was the heaviness of being carried as one might carry a child, upstairs and into bed after a long day of doing whatever it is that children do to exhaust themselves. Max felt a tug then to tell her mother everything. To spill to her exactly what it was that was filling her up. The time travel. The storm. The weight of her decisions. Chloe, alone all those years. Chloe now, feeling as though she was responsible for the death of a town. At length, she told her mother nothing, and she was released to hug her father instead.

This was a different hug. Gruff and warm and trying to fit in all the things that Ryan Caulfield would never tell his daughter. All the love that he could never put into words. She looked to him, then, small and frail and sad. He wanted to hold her always, to keep her safe and happy. He wanted only what was best for her. He felt the tremendous pain of a father who will do nothing because he can do nothing. 

Next to them, Chloe was hugging her mother and her stepfather at once. The sort of hug she would have squirmed out of the summer before, but now she hugged them as honestly as anyone ever could. She had one arm around each of them; her right cheek was warm and soft against her mothers, and her left was agitated with David’s stubble, but she didn’t mind it in that moment. She remembered what she said on the cliff, about her mother and David deserving more, and she stood by that. She would give them more, if she could. They pulled apart, and the six stood awkwardly for a moment, as all families do. The silence of love lapsing into stillness. 

“You both look tired.” Joyce observed. Max and Chloe exchanged looks. Each tried to take a measure of the other objectively, disentangled from their feelings. Chloe thought Max looked thinner than she had been two months ago, and the hollowness of her face was more pronounced now, the bags under her eyes darker. Max thought Chloe looked leaner, and scrappier, as though at any moment she would pounce into some greater action, as though her fight or flight reflex had already pre-decided on fight. Each supposed that the other looked tired.

“Long drives.” Max said with a shrug. Ryan and David each went about collecting the girls’ baggage while Joyce and Vanessa each began to interrogate their daughters. How had the drive been? Where did they stop? What happened to the truck, exactly? Did they call the police? Where did they stay? What were their plans now? Had they been spending money wisely? Did they have souvenirs? Had they been eating well? Had they called the insurance company yet? Why hadn’t they called the police? Where did Max get that camera? Was Chloe still smoking? It went on like this until they arrived at the Caulfield’s home. 

Chloe did most of the talking. The drive was fine. Stopped all over. It got stolen. No. Airbnbs mostly. Undecided (a lie). They had. They did. Debatably. They didn’t know that they had to. It seemed like a waste of time. Victoria bought it for her. She was, but less (the truth). Max remained mostly silent, except when she felt Chloe’s curtness wasn’t getting the point across. 

“She’s smoking a lot less!” Max said excitedly. “A pack every five days or so now.” This was the truth. Max hadn’t been keeping a perfectly accurate tally, of course. Chloe had gone from smoking a pack a day to about 1.37 packs a week now, which was an achievement as far as either was concerned. Max was proud of her girlfriend, but wouldn’t admit to herself that she did find the image of Chloe smoking a cigarette to be attractive both aesthetically and sexually. About a third of the pictures Max had taken featured Chloe smoking a cigarette.

“Good job, kid.” David said, sincerely. 

“Moving the time table back on dying of cancer, for the moment.” Chloe said, ribbing Max. “Gotta keep this one in trouble, you know?” Joyce scoffed and slapped her daughter on the knee.

“You’d better not be! Max is a good kid!” She said. Chloe looked at Max with a glint in her eye as if to say: ‘You here that?’ Max slapped her on her other knee to Joyce.

Joyce and David had left the Caulfields’ home the month before, and were now moved into a small home outside of Seattle. David, as paranoid as he was, had the forethought to purchase storm insurance on the house which had paid out well in the wake of the house’s total destruction. His medical bills had also been covered, and the only real sign of his injuries to an outside observer was a limp and major scarring, visible only when his pant leg lifted up far enough to be visible. The skin was still red, and raw, but he almost never mentioned it. He carried it with the stoicism that one expected of a man of his type. 

Ryan and Vanessa still lived in the same home they had while Max was living with them, but now it felt different to Max. They pulled up and she stood in the driveway for a while longer than was reasonable. The house even looked different to her. Nothing had really changed, but it wasn’t her home anymore. Chloe stood next to her, watching her breath leak out of her mouth. The parents were already inside by the time they noticed the girls hadn’t come in with them. Chloe waved them on and Joyce quickly diverted their attention away from Max, who was looking up at the house’s windows, and the roof, and the trim.

“What’s on your mind, Caulfield?” Chloe said. Max shrugged.

“Feels weird.” She said. 

“Not home anymore?” Chloe asked.

“You’re my home.” Max said, immediately, with such thoughtlessness as to the love in that statement it derailed utterly any further conversation. 

“Christ.” Chloe said. They walked into the house. On the counter was official correspondence from what was called the Blackwell Academy Foundation. It had arrived two days before, but Vanessa had neglected to mention it. It was a diploma Max hadn’t really earned. It contained a letter paired with the diploma. The letter said this:

Dear Maxine Caulfield,

In light of your credits, and in light of recent events, the Blackwell Academy Foundation has seen fit to award you a degree of completion for the photography course. Please find contained herein said diploma. Thank you for attending Blackwell, we look forward to continued correspondence and contributions from you as our valued alumnus.

Sincerely,

Alexander Prescott

Chairman of the Blackwell Academy Foundation 

Max read through the letter and then handed it to Chloe. It seemed like a weird joke. A certificate for a course she hadn’t completed, signed by some relation of Nathan Prescott. She was shocked that this Alexander person hadn’t been asked to step down.

“That’s fucking rad.” Chloe said, handing the letter to Vanessa and Ryan who read it in tandem. “Do you think they mixed up their files and I can get one of those too?” Chloe and Max had talked a lot about Chloe getting a GED. Given that they were transplanting themselves to another country within the next year it hardly seemed to matter anymore. 

“Are they asking for donations?” Ryan said.

“You can’t get a degree for dropping out Chloe.” Joyce said.

“Is anyone hungry?” Vanessa said. “Joyce made food this morning.” 

“Yes!” Max and Chloe said in perfect unison. 

If there was ever a draw for Max and Chloe to return home, it was Joyce’s cooking. Vanessa was not unskilled, but Joyce was a breed all her own. The only time the group was quiet was when they were eating, and when they were eating it was always Joyce’s cooking, with touches from Vanessa or Ryan – who was skilled in his own way, with deserts mostly.

They spent the two days leading up to Christmas like this. Alternating between talking over one another and eating and drink coffee and tea and hot cocoa all the while A Christmas Story played on a constant cycle on the television in the living room. Chloe stayed with Max in her old bedroom, which Vanessa had refused to change so that Max would always have a place to come home to if she needed it. When she needed it. 

On December 24th, in the evening, when Max and her father had gone outside to “fix the lights” as Ryan said, and David and Joyce had found some other reason to evacuate, Chloe and Vanessa were left alone in the living room, the TV turned way down low, and Chloe at once knew that something was about to happen. She had never been intimidated by Vanessa before in her whole life, she had always been a second mother, but now everything seemed different. it was like the air had left the room. 

“So, Chloe…” Vanessa started off. She and Chloe sat in a pair of big arm chairs that were perfectly angled in the living room so that the television was visible with only a slight twist of the neck, but also so it was clear that the television was not the centerpiece of the room.

“Uhm…yes? Vanessa.” Chloe said. She considered redacting it to Mrs. Caulfield but she knew she was already in too deep for that. Only a moment ago Max had nearly been sitting in her lap, and had been absently playing with the loose strings on her sweater, she wondered if that might have been too much for Vanessa to see. She wondered if now was the moment when Vanessa revealed she was a closeted homophobe. 

“How are things with Max?” Vanessa asked, and Chloe blanched. 

“She’s well, why?” She said. This seemed absurd to say. To any outside observer Max might easily be seen as tremendously unwell, but given what she had seen and done and been a party to, it made sense that she might be less than perfect, but she was eating more now that Joyce was cooking, and she was sleeping more. Chloe too woke up less in the middle of the night. 

“She’s thin, and…I don’t know. She’s been so quiet, both of you have.” Vanessa said, looking hard at Chloe. This was an unfortunate side-effect of what Max and Chloe had been through, what Max remembered vividly and what Chloe could only piece together from the tiredness she felt and the sense of vague recollection when Max recounted the events which took place in other times: Max and Chloe had become an entity subsisting entirely off of the other’s love, a defense mechanism against the harshness of the world, and the suddenness with which each person expected life to come to an end. 

“Yeah, it’s just…you know, it’s a shitload to handle. Oh, sorry. It’s a lot to handle.” Chloe said, and she knew that it was. But she knew that more than that it was impossible to make Vanessa understand. Even if she and Max sat down with a chalk-board and several dozen hours, how could they ever explain everything that had happened? How could they make their parents believe them?

“But you two know that you can always talk to us.” Vanessa said. “Max has mentioned that she loves you, and you know that we do too.” Chloe remembered once, when she was younger, Vanessa and Joyce calling her middle school to complain to the administration that someone had been bullying Chloe. Max hadn’t even been involved, but as soon as Vanessa found out she joined the warpath. That was just the kind of woman she was. 

“I know. I love you guys too.” Chloe said. She and Max had meant to hold off on telling their parents their plants until the last possible moment, but it felt impossible now to avoid it. Felt like everything was going to come pouring out of Chloe at this very moment. Outside, Max was having the same feeling. 

Ryan was on top of a ladder, his hands over his head, screwing and unscrewing lights that had gone out, trying to find the bulb responsible. This was the last string of lights that they had that would go out completely if one bulb died, but Ryan insisted that they not throw it out until it stopped working entirely, Max was watching with a smile on her face, a flashlight shining up to giver her dad a light.

“So, how is…ah damn, how is stuff with Chloe? Is she treating you…ah maybe? No. Is she treating you well?” Ryan said, working, huffing as he went. Max considered the question, though she didn’t need to. 

“We’re perfect.” Max said. 

“Good. Your mother and I love her, we’re…good you angle that up? Perfect. Your mother and I love her, and we’re happy for you two.” Ryan said. “But, ah! Wait, no…shit. Your mother and I are concerned that you two are doing badly after…” Now he trailed off, and his hands stopped their working. The words he meant to speak, Max thought, probably hung differently in his heart than they did in hers. She was thinking ‘after you killed those people.’

“After the storm.” Ryan finished. 

“It’s a lot to deal with. Chloe’s helping me.” Max said. It was true. They had developed an unspoken system which Max was eternally grateful for. The system was this: they need never mention blame for the storm, each person merely did their best to convince the other that while they had played no part, their feelings of guilt were understandable. 

That morning, Max and Chloe had been unloading dishes in the kitchen, laughing and fooling around and something hit a nerve for Chloe. She stilled up, her eyes went glassy and Max didn’t need to ask where her head had gone, it was obvious. She put down the plate which she had been holding and wrapped her arms around Chloe’s neck, hiding her face in Chloe’s chest. 

“I chose you, and I would choose you again and again, Chloe.” Max confided. This was the fear that had latched onto Chloe’s heart the most often, that Max would eventually realize the depth of her mistake. Chloe wrapped her arms around Max and squeezed. To the outside observer this would look like the sudden need for contact that new lovers experienced, but to the two people existing within the interior of this moment it was the drive for comfort and contact, the drive to be known by the person who loved you most. Max and Chloe came together this wat often. Max would suddenly find the prospect of being separate from Chloe unbearable. She felt that creeping feeling now, rise in her.

“I love her, dad. I always have.” Max said to Ryan.

“Got it!” Ryan proclaimed as he found the bulb that had been making the string black out. He turned back to his daughter. “I know, sweet pea, we support you.” Just then David and Joyce came up the drive way. Max wondered if they had purposefully made themselves scarce. She wondered what sort of talk Chloe was having with her mother inside the house.

“Looks good, Ryan.” David said. Ryan folded the ladder and set it down alongside the house, stepping back then to look at his work. 

“Thanks, David.” He said, practically beaming. Then he looked at Max. “Come on, it’s time to give out gifts.”

This was a tradition in the Caulfield household on the eve of Christmas. Each Christmas Eve there would be an exchange of one gift for each person, nothing tremendously lavish or spectacular or expensive was exchanged, it was not an exchange of the best gifts, but instead some small token of affection. Each person opened one gift, chosen by themselves from the small horde under the Christmas tree. This had started when Max was a toddler, and when she had found out that it was not simply a Christmas tradition for every household she had been floored.

When Max found Chloe in the house she and Vanessa were sitting on the couch and Chloe was talking about something that had happened on their trip.

“…And Max, dude! Max just fucking – sorry, she just opens up on this dude like straight gets in his face!” Chloe said beaming, not yet aware that everyone else had reentered the home. Vanessa looked at her daughter with no small amount of admiration. This was the retelling of a story when Max had been catcalled and in a fit of what she considered to be incredible stupidity, she confronted the guy. The end of the story was that Max upended her coffee on the man and he slunk away cursing.

“Chloe!” Max broke in. She wrapped her arms around her girlfriend from behind and leaned against her, her mouth right next to Chloe’s ear. “Shut up!” She whispered, before kissing Chloe gently on the cheek. 

“Oh!” Chloe said, and at once the story was forgotten.

“Gift time?” Vanessa said. 

The exchange of gifts was this: Max gave to Vanessa who gave to Joyce who gave to Ryan who gave to David who gave to Chloe who gave to Max. Each person was satisfied with their gifts, as adults who don’t know that they need anything tend to be, but Vanessa sat on the couch, holding her gift in her hands as one might hold a Fabergé Egg, something extremely precious and fragile. It was a photo which Max had taken in the Grand Canyon, with her and Chloe smiling genuinely up at the camera, Chloe’s arm around Max’s waist. For all intents and purposes, it was a selfie, but it showed the girls as Vanessa wanted to remember them: as happy, and young, and so very much in love. She had been asking for a photo to put on the mantle for two months now, and here it was. Perfect. Showing her daughter and the woman she loved. Vanessa looked at the two young women.

In that moment Max was holding up the sweater that Chloe had given her, an unbearably ugly Christmas sweater which featured, amongst other things, the phrase “I’m Max” written on it. The sweater came with a partner sweater which read “If found, please return to Max.” The other sweater was Chloe’s, and despite how much she was blushing, and how much Chloe was teasing her, Vanessa saw genuine love on her daughter’s face, and on Chloe’s, and she knew in that moment that Max had found in her oldest friend the sort of love that some people never found. Vanessa remembered falling in love with Ryan, and how she still loved him, and marveled that her daughter had found something like that so early in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As one might expect, there will also be a Christmas chapter. Happy holidays to all y'all, especially if you don't celebrate Christmas, or don't have anyone with whom to celebrate. Be good to one another this holiday season, and every other season besides.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all like it, this is just to cool down between writing twenty page research papers for school. There will be more I'm sure, I love my daughters and how gay they are. My gay ass just wants the lesbians (plausibly bisexuals?) to be happy, is that so much to ask?


End file.
